How Christopher Meloni and Ellen Burstyn’s Law & Order Family Dynamic Extends Off Screen: ‘You’re My Mother’

Christopher Meloni found a different kind of mother in his Law and order actress Ellen Burstyn.

Meloni (62) and Burstyn (90) shared how their on-screen mother-son relationship translated into the real world during an interview with Interview magazine.

Exorcist: Believer star — who portrays Meloni’s character, Elliot Stabler’s mother Bernadette, on both Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and actor’s Organized crime spinoff — recalled the touching moment when she realized the actor was more than her co-star.

“You know what I was thinking about yesterday?” she asked during a July 12 interview ahead of the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike. “One day on the set [of Organized Crime] you said, ‘Why are you doing this to me, Dimi?’ It is a line from The exorcist. And I was so amazed because my son is saying that line to me in real life.”

She added: “When you said that, it was like I was in two realities at once.”

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Christopher Meloni and Ellen Burstyn on ‘Law and Order: Organized Crime’.

Virginia Sherwood/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty

The moment also turned out to mean a lot to Melona, ​​who shared how the interaction gave him a new perspective on their relationship.

“Afterwards I said, ‘Since I lost my mother a few years ago, you’ve been – in my life, in our business – you’ve been my mother,'” he said.

Burstyn said: “It’s very easy. It’s like stepping into a pair of old shoes. I slipped into your mother.”

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Christopher Meloni.

Scott Gries/NBC via Getty Images

Back in March 2017, Meloni spoke about how his Kidnapped costars Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn comforted him on set just one day after his mother Cecile Meloni died in 2016.

“We were shooting in Hawaii and I was doing a few of my scenes for a few weeks there, and then they said, ‘We’re not going to need you for a while, so go home,'” he recalled during an appearance on Conversation. “So I returned to the east and unfortunately my mother fell ill and passed away.”

He continued: “I actually had to leave by her bedside, took off and by the time I landed, she had passed away. So no one knew except the producers and directors and everyone was very nice and kind.”

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The next morning, Meloni recalled taking a boat up the river to film with Schumer and Hawn. When he broke the news of his mother’s death, the actor said that Hawn pulled her into a “tight” hug, while Schumer took a lighter approach to cheer him up.

“And then Amy, she says ‘Wait, what did you just say?’ I said, ‘Well, my mother passed away.’ She says, ‘Oh, that’s terrible. Just a little,’” he said with a laugh as he brought his cell phone to his face, copying Schumer’s gesture.

“I knew he was joking. … How brave of her — she called, she should have diffused all these obvious emotions that were filling the boat,” said Meloni, who added, “And later — this was even sweeter — later she said, ‘You know that I was just kidding, right?'”

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Law and Order: Special Victims Unit it can be streamed in its entirety on Hulu and the first three seasons Law and order: organized crime are available in the NBC app.

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Source: HIS Education