How do actors play corpses on shows like Law and Order?
After so many hours of marathon running Law & Order: Special Victims UnitUltimately, viewers begin to wonder: How do actors convincingly play corpses? And do they get breaks to breathe?
Happy, Ask us is here to find the answer. It turns out not to be easy to control twitching eyelids, a small moment of breathing or even, in a tight close-up, a pulsating vein, which is why some actors specialize.
While they gave us a regular tour for NBC’s St. Denis Medicalcast member Mekki Leeper recalled talking to one such cadaver king: “The actor told me he auditions dead bodies all the time and always books them.”
The professional has a foolproof strategy for determining when to breathe. “He holds his breath as long as he can and listens to the scene over and over again,” Leeper explained. “When a main character speaks, he knows that person is coming in front of the camera. Then he breathes quickly.”
Although it takes skill, many people seem to have a death wish. Mariska Hargitay told Seth Meijers that stars are always begging her for one Law and order: SVU guest spot – like a lifeless body.
‘All the famous people, you know what they want? To be a corpse,” she said during an October interview. “It’s so weird.”
Meyers, however, didn’t think it was that strange. He revealed that he was one of the celebrities who requested to play dead on the NBC show.
‘I wanted to be a corpse. I met all of these during the 2007-2008 writers’ strike Law and order writers, and I was like, ‘I want to do a cameo, but I just want to be a corpse,'” Meyers recalled. “And they said, ‘Oh my God, we’d love to have you on the show.’ But I thought, ‘Okay, but I’m a dead person.’
His agent sent a script, but Meyers was disappointed to discover that he had to memorize lines. “I was like, ‘I don’t want any rules, I just want to be a dead person in the park.'”
Hargitay revealed that the same thing recently happened to another A-lister.
“This just happened to me with a big supermodel… I found out she loved my show. So I said, ‘Oh my God!’ I went to the writers and said, ‘Can she be on the show?’ And she said she wanted to be a corpse, but then I said, ‘No, no, we have a great role for you,'” Hargitay recalled. “I call her back and said, ‘Listen, we got it. We’ll get you on the show.” She says, ‘Oh no! No, no, no, no, no, I want to be a corpse. ”
She joked: ‘It happens all the time! Why don’t these famous people want rules?”
