Mariska & Peter attend the Just Before I Go Premiere during the Tribeca Film Festival at the SVA Theater on April 24, 2014 in New York City. I’ve added 3 HQ pictures to the gallery. Keep checking back for more!

Just Before I Go Premiere
April 24, 2014

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USA Network, the longtime home to those addictive Law & Order: SVU marathons, is teaming up with series star Mariska Hargitay for a new marathon to raise awareness of and to help stop domestic violence and sexual assault, TVGuide.com has learned exclusively.

To commemorate National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention month, and in partnership with Hargitay’s Joyful Heart charitable foundation and the No More campaign, USA will air a special 16-hour SVU “No More Excuses” marathon hosted by Hargitay and her SVU co-stars Ice-T, Danny Pino and Kelli Giddish.

“I am grateful to USA for their courage, vision and generosity in joining us to say NO MORE to domestic violence and sexual assault,” Hargitay said in a statement. “Being part of NO MORE from the beginning has been a great privilege. Society continues to misplace shame and blame on survivors — both women and men. That has to end. NO MORE confronts the myths and excuses that perpetuate domestic violence and sexual assault. I am filled with confidence and renewed determination that, together, we can and will put an end to this violence.”

The marathon, which kicks off Sunday, April 27 at 10 a.m./9c, will also feature PSAs starring SVU alumni such as Christopher Meloni, Debra Messing, Dann Florek, Maria Bello, Andre Braugher, Marcia Gay Harden, Blair Underwood, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Peter Hermann and David Marciano.

Throughout the marathon, viewers will be encouraged to seek out additional information online, or to call national help hotlines to speak with counselors and advocates. More information on the No More campaign, which aims to end the social stigma surrounding domestic violence and sexual assault, can be found here.

Check out Hargitay and Ice-T’s promo for Sunday’s “No More Excuses” marathon here:

Law & Order: SVU‘s “No More Excuses” marathon starts Sunday at 10 a.m./9c on USA.

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05/07/2014 (09:00PM – 10:01PM) (Wednesday) : A CHILD IS CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF A FAMOUS COUPLE’S NASTY DIVORCE

Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Murphy (guest star Donal Logue) question renowned television producer Frank Maddox (guest star Bradley Whitford) when he’s accused of molesting his 8 year-old daughter Chelsea (guest star Clare Foley). Maddox’s estranged wife, actress Catherine Summers (guest star Samantha Mathis), wants justice for her daughter but refuses to cooperate, leading the cops to suspect the accusation was a ploy to win the public’s favor. With Catherine’s young sister Rose (guest star Emma Bell) engaged to Maddox and accusations flying back and forth in the media, Benson strives to help a child by discovering the truth. Also starring Ice-T (Detective Odafin Tutuola), Danny Pino (Detective Nick Amaro), Kelli Giddish (Detective Amanda Rollins) and Raúl Esparza (ADA Rafael Barba). Also guest starring Jeffrey Tambor (Counselor Lester Cohen), Celia Keenan-Bolger (Mavis Summers), Aida Turturro (Judge Felicia Catano), Geraldo Rivera (as himself) and Ann Curry (as herself).

Talk about a rerun. Almost every spring, the fate of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU remains unsettled until the last possible moment. TV Guide Magazine talked to showrunner Warren Leight about the prospects for Season 16.

TV Guide Magazine: You, along with some of the cast and crew, have been tweeting under the hashtag “Renew SVU.” So everyone wants to return?
Warren Leight: It’s fair to say the cast and crew want the show to come back and the show deserves to come back.

TV Guide Magazine: It’s done pretty well this season, particularly in the demos, thought it’s not what it once was.
Leight: It’s done well in our impossible time slot [Wednesday, 9/8c]. Idol, Criminal Minds and Modern Family are down and we’re up 5 percent from last year. Chicago Fire was the only other NBC drama that’s up for the year and it’s positioned after The Voice. We also served as a good launching pad for Fire and Chicago P.D. From our point of view, the show, to paraphrase Dick [Wolf], the show’s as good as ever. Mariska [Hargitay] is quite happy.

TV Guide Magazine: Mariska has indicated that she would be happy to return, but she hasn’t signed a new contract, has she?
Warren Leight: It would be helpful to get the show picked up so all those other deals can be made. We’re just in that moment of purgatory — for a crime we haven’t committed.

TV Guide Magazine: A Deadline article put the blame on Dick Wolf, saying he won’t take a pay cut to keep the expensive show alive.
Warren Leight: That Deadline thing was crap. That was somebody with an agenda leaking it. If it’s about budget, the last time our budget was this low was Season 8, back in 2006-2007.

TV Guide Magazine: You cut some longtime players, like Dann Florek and Richard Belzer. That saved some bucks.
Warren Leight: And we run the show much more efficiently than it used to be run in the old days. What this is, is a game of brinksmanship. The show generates plenty of money. This is one of those times we just have to wait until the last moment to see who blinks. All of the big guns need to sit down and talk. I have lots of people every day coming up to me saying, ‘Have you heard anything? Do I have a job? Should I take the other job? I don’t want to leave this show, but Blue Bloods is calling.’

TV Guide Magazine: I hear some pilots have reached out to you.
Warren Leight: I’m employable; Mariska’s employable. We can all get work, but if you have a year like this, you would like to think you’d get another one. Our hope is a hero will emerge to find common ground.

TV Guide Magazine: Are you writing a season finale that can serve as a series finale, just in case?
Warren Leight: We’re still writing the finale. We always cut things pretty close by the end of the season, but I would say, all the other stuff is distracting. There won’t be a cliffhanger like last year’s when Olivia had a gun at her head. But there will be some unresolved questions that will jump you into the next season. I don’t want to bet against the show.

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Law & Order: SVUis bringing a familiar face back to the force.

B.D. Wongwill reprise his role as Dr. George Huang in Season 15?s penultimate episode, TVGuide.com reports.

In the hour, which airs May 14, Dr. Huang discovers something shocking about a suspect during a psychiatric consult.

Wong (Awake, Oz) left SVU at the end of Season 12, but since has made occasional appearances on the series. He returns as the veteran NBC drama is going through something of a transition, having said goodbye to original cast members Dann Florek and Richard Belzer earlier this season.

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I’m excited that Donal Logue is sticking around on SVU. What’s coming up for the squad with him in charge? — Martin
His promotion is going to cause all kinds of drama in the squad room. For starters, Murphy’s past relationship with Detective Rollins will rub Benson the wrong way. “Olivia cannot trust [Amanda] at all, and now this guy [is] in charge of the unit and he’s the one person in the world who trusts Amanda,” executive producer Warren Leight says. But Benson isn’t the only one who’ll be in an awkward spot. “Nick came up to him and sucker-punched him on the street. [It's] not ideal that Murphy is now his boss.”

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04/30/2014 (09:00PM – 10:01PM) (Wednesday) : SERGEANT BENSON (MARISKA HARGITAY) FACES THE AFTERMATH OF THE BEAST’S FINAL ACT

In the moments after William Lewis’ death, Sergeant Benson (Hargitay) is rescued by the SVU squad, but her torment continues. The Internal Affairs investigation of her actions is deemed inconclusive, and with no evidence to corroborate her story, Prosecutor Derek Strauss (Greg Germann) convenes a grand jury and calls for Benson’s arrest. With increasing pressure from Lt. Tucker (guest star Robert John Burke) and Lt. Murphy (Donal Logue) to save herself any way she can, Benson must choose between her convictions and her badge. Also starring Ice-T (Detective Odafin Tutuola), Danny Pino (Detective Nick Amaro) and Kelli Giddish (Detective Amanda Rollins). Also guest starring Elizabeth Marvel (Rita Calhoun), Bill Irwin (Dr. Lindstrom), Michael Potts (Sgt. Draper), Tamara Tunie (M.E. Warner), Curt Bouril (Det. Carlson) and Nikki Estridge (Det. Delano).

[WARNING: This story contains major spoilers from Wednesday's Law & Order: SVU. Read at your own risk!]

Breaking up is hard to do. Even with a serial rapist and cold-blooded killer like William “The Beast” Lewis on Law & Order: SVU.

“Every time we did an episode, it seemed to deepen so I didn’t want to give it up. But on the other hand, I knew I had to,” showrunner Warren Leight tells TVGuide.com of Wednesday’s “Last Dance” between Benson and The Beast. “It felt like there was one last confrontation. He’s not the kind of guy who’s just going to go down quietly and live in prison. That’s just not in his character.”

After kidnapping and attacking Benson (Mariska Hargitay) in the Season 15 premiere, and subsequently being locked up in prison for his crimes, Lewis (Pablo Schreiber) managed to escape from prison for one final match with his most memorable victim after she lied about why she fractured his skull and brutally beat him with a pipe on the stand. “William Lewis has been obsessing over it for months and he knows the truth and he knows she knows the truth,” Leight says. “All he wants is revenge and he wants her exposed and he wants her to go down. He knows the Achilles heel, the weak spot for her — it’s what she did to him.”

In the gripping episode, Lewis kidnapped a 12-year-old girl after killing her mother and sexually abusing her older sister in an attempt to lure Olivia to him. He threatened to kill the girl if Olivia didn’t publicly confess to perjury and so she did just that in a televised and somber statement. “She’s been tormented by the fact that she lied under oath. I don’t think that’s part of her character. The initial lie came moments after she’d survived that ordeal and she got locked into it because that’s how this system works,” Leight says. “If you think of William Lewis as her character’s worst nightmare, the other thing that plagued her is she is a woman of absolute integrity who lied under oath in front of a jury.”

However, that public move wasn’t enough for Lewis, and Olivia was forced to abandon her 24-hour protection and meet up with Lewis herself. Although he threatened to rape her as the young girl hung by her hands nearby, it was an (almost) deadly game of Russian roulette that Lewis and Benson played with a partially loaded gun that provided the most chilling moments of the hour. In the end, Lewis shot himself in the head, and his blood splash across Olivia’s face as the episode cut to black. “In the season opener, she was kidnapped and held hostage against her will. She had no choice in the matter. And in this episode, she made a conscious decision to go back for him,” Leight says. “There will be repercussions from that choice, but there’s something very heroic about what she did and very self-aware. In the next episode, she tells her shrink, ‘I knew I could die. It is what it is.’ There’s something almost cathartic about that.”

There will also be major repercussions for her perjury confession in the next episode, titled “Postmortem Blues.” “It will be all the ramifications for her personally and politically and professionally form this episode,” Leight says. “There’s an I.D. investigation, there’s a grand jury and she’s in a box. Because now if she goes to the grand jury and says that confession was the truth, she’s on the hook for brutality, perjury, excessive force, assault, and if she goes to the grand jury and says it was a lie … then she’s lying again. And that’s not something I think she can handle either.”

No matter which path she chooses, Olivia will also have to deal with a new boss. Donal Logue, who reprised his role as Lt. Declan Murphy in Wednesday’s episode, will stick around for the rest of the season as the temporary new captain in the wake of Olivia’s demotion. “She basically gets stripped of her command in front of her unit by him. That is not meeting cute,” Leight says. “And yet, I think what we’ll see evolve is they have enormous respect for each other.”

Lt. Murphy will shake things up a lot as someone able to offer a rare outsider’s perspective on the SVU squad — something Leight drew on from his own experience as the new showrunner on the 12-year-old series. “Cragen was there that whole time so there was no one going, ‘What the hell is going on here?’” Leight says. “Donal comes in fresh and he has different ways of policing and has a different take on these guys than they do.”

Although Olivia will have many new obstacles to overcome, the end of her battle with Lewis is something to celebrate. “Believe it or not, I actually think that there’s some closure at the end of that episode. It feels like I’ve been saying that about Pablo for awhile, but there is a sense of playing it through finally,” Leight says. “Some doors are finally closed so I think that leaves room for others.”

Could one of those other doors open to reveal a child? Olivia’s desire to have a family was reignited earlier this season when she falsely thought she was pregnant. She subsequently ended things with Cassidy (Dean Winters) when she realized he didn’t share her dream of parenthood. “Either people get stuck or they break out of their patterns and she is a smart enough woman to start breaking out and there’s been enough change in her life. Elliot is gone, Cragen is gone, Munch is gone, she’s had a relationship for the first time. … She’s faced down William Lewis,” Leight says. “Maybe she’s ready to change a diaper.”

Although Olivia has tried, and failed, more than once in a past to care for a child, it’s a very real possibility going forward. “It would be great for her character to have a kid in her life, and is that something we can accomplish in whatever time we have left here at SVU is interesting to me,” Leight says. “The notion that Olivia can never be happy is probably due for a slight makeover.”

The question of time is due to the fact that SVU has yet to be renewed. The show has enjoyed a strong season both story-wise, thanks to Benson’s kidnapping and trial and Rollins’ downward spiral, and in the ratings, which are up five percent from last season. “I think the show, on the merits, should have been picked up already and deserves to be picked up,” Leight says. “There’s that expression, ‘Don’t leave anything on the court,’ and I don’t think we did this year. We pushed as hard as we could all year long.”

However, Leight is cautiously optimistic about a 16th season. “I would like to believe that things will play out and we’ll get another year,” Leight says, “but it’s a complicated business.”

Law & Order: SVU airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on NBC. What did you think about Wednesday’s episode? Will you miss “The Beast?”

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