It’s not unusual for actors to do research to place themselves in the mindset of their characters.
But for Dylan McDermott, who is wrapping up a 16-episode arc as a gangster on “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” all he had to do to find inspiration was look into his past.
McDermott, 60, recently opened up about his childhood interactions with mobsters and criminals, and how they colored his portrayal of Richard Wheatley, a CEO of an online pharmaceutical company with mob ties, on the crime procedural. “I was privy to a world that probably most actors would not be. And I always absorbed that, and I always took it in,” he said in a recent interview.
“My mother’s boyfriend was a bank robber when I was growing up,” he told the Associated Press, which reports that his mother died in 1967 in what was then ruled as an accidental shooting. However, a 2012 police investigation concluded that she was instead killed by her boyfriend, a now deceased gangster.
“He got his end, and it was not – not good,” he said, noting that people like the mobsters he interacted with while waiting tables and tending bar in New York do not all have the same trajectory as his character, whose modern-day maneuvering lands him in the inner circle of influential people. “They all end up either dead or in prison. So there’s no good stories there.”
Perhaps no good stories, but their habits, like smoking, did make it into McDermott’s portrayal.
“A lot of these guys smoke, frankly, and I know there was some concern, but then they let me do it. Ultimately, maybe because I was the bad guy,” he noted.
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Christopher Meloni, who plays McDermott’s nemesis detective Elliot Stabler on “Organized Crime” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” said that McDermott’s portrayal avoided “a minefield of cliché.”
Meloni continued, praising McDermott for not falling “into the traps an actor could have tripped on. He is the villain for the 21st century.”
While McDermott is exiting NBC’s “Law & Order” universe, he’ll stay in the orbit of producer Dick Wolf. According to Variety, the “American Horror Story” star is slated to lead on Wolf’s “FBI: Most Wanted” at CBS.
McDermott will be taking over for Julian McMahon, who will be leaving "FBI: Most Wanted" after three seasons.
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