Keeping cool:
Law And Order: SVU star Ice-T reveals how he deals with a role that involves hunting the ‘worst of the worst’ criminals. Jenny Cooney reports.
Why Ice-T was a reluctant SVU star.
Ice-T has lived many lives. He started out as Tracy Marrow, a US army soldier before he rose to fame and notoriety as Ice-T, a pioneer of both gangster rap and rap-metal. But for the past two decades, he has been best known as police sergeant Fin Tutuola in the procedural TV drama Law And Order: SVU.
Looking back on his unpredictable career, the 61-year-old singer and actor, whose movie credits include roles in New Jack City and Tank Girl, confides it was a part he initially turned down.
“I was a little reluctant back then to pursue this kind of stuff and I was stubborn and said, ‘No I don’t want to do episodic drama. I’d rather sit around and do a movie or two a year’,” he now admits sheepishly. “If I’d not reconsidered, I wouldn’t have gone on this ride.”
In 1991, Ice-T’s album, O.G. Original Gangster, was hailed as one of the gangsta rap genre’s pivotal records, elevating him to the status of hip-hop great.
But at the same time, he began exploring acting and after a few roles in other TV shows created by Dick Wolf, he finally joined Law And Order: SVU.
“I came in the last episode of the first season, so technically I can claim the first season,” he smiles. “It was my fifth show with Dick Wolf after Swift Justice, New York Undercover, Players and Law And Order: Exiled, the movie where I played a pimp and they killed me with a bowling pin.
“They asked me to play a cop and said, ‘Just four episodes, Ice, that’s all we need you for’. So I came on set that first day thinking, ‘If these people suck, then ... I’ll be out of here in four weeks.’ I couldn’t have imagined then it would turn into 21 years.”
Ice-T recalls the initial description of his character was a long way from the Fin he plays today.
“They had a back story for Fin where his parents were Black Panthers. He went to law school but never took the Bar and was
dressed in suits,” he says. “But Dick Wolf was like, ‘This isn’t working. We are losing Ice-T so why lose that fan base?’
“He called me later and said, ‘You don’t like the police, do you?’ and I said, ‘Well I used to be a criminal so I didn’t really hate them but I thought they were the opponent.’
“He thought about it and said, ‘Play the cop some of your friends needed to get apprehended by to get honest’ and that’s who Fin is.”
The series shines a spotlight on a dark world of rapists and paedophiles, but Ice-T tries to play down the toll it takes on him.
“In reality it would be difficult to be the cop chasing paedophiles and rapists but I just play one.
“You are chasing the worst of the worst because inmates in jail don’t even like these types of criminals, so it reminds you that you really have to be straight down the line as that kind of cop.”
Last July he released his first solo hip-hop track in 10 years, Feds In My Rearview, and admits it hasn’t been easy to combine his rapping alter ego with his celebrity status.
“I worried about my street cred after I did New Jack City because
I was coming from putting out an album called the Original Gangster to playing a cop and that was a scary moment for me,” he says.
“But the guys I ran with, the real criminals, they respected a hustle, and one said, ‘Ice, you pulled the greatest scam in the history of the world because to have your background and then have white people all over the world say, ‘Oh invite him to my son’s Bar Mitzvah, he’s nice’ – now that’s acting’.”
Despite the dark subject matter of the show, the earnest acting rapper still strives to find balance between comedy and tragedy.
“We did one show where guys were cutting their penises off voluntarily and I was sitting at the table when we were reading the script out loud for the first time and I was screaming, ‘What?’ and everybody laughed at me,” he recalls.
“But I also remember saying on a talk show years ago that I didn’t know there would be enough sex crimes for the show to keep going this long so I’m happy to have a job but it boggles the imagination that some of this stuff is so creepy.”
“I used to be a criminal so I didn’t really hate them but I thought they were the opponent.”
– Ice-T on how he used to feel about the police