Spoilers are ahead for Episode 11 of Law & Order Season 24, called "The Hardest Thing" and set to stream with a Peacock subscription.
Law & Order started out its latest episode in the 2025 TV schedule with Shaw, Riley, and Baxter catching a the killer of a wealthy man, but the case got a lot more complicated once it fell to the prosecutors. The extra complication for Nolan? His brother turned up at the office to confront him about their father's failing health, leading Nolan to eventually make a difficult decision and even open up to Maroun.
When I spoke with star Hugh Dancy about "The Hardest Thing," he proved that he's put quite a lot of thought into what makes his character tick over his four seasons so far to this point.
Nolan's Family Reunion
The first episode after Law & Order's big ER reunion finally revisited Nolan's storyline with his father in the hospital, although he would have preferred to keep it far from the homicide case that was also about assisted suicide. His brother Thomas showed up at the office to talk about their dad, who just took another turn for the worse and needed to either enter hospice care or be attached to a feeding tube.
Nolan definitely didn't want to have the conversations at work, but Hugh Dancy was a big fan of getting to play such a tricky storyline for his character. Speaking with CinemaBlend, he had high praise for Justin Chatwin, who came on board to play Thomas Price:
It was a kind of funny exercise, because obviously, we shoot an episode in eight days. Of those, I tend to be in, let's say, four. So the stuff I had with Justin probably boiled down to half a day or something spread over a few different days. But because of the situation they're in, we spent almost as much time talking beforehand as we did filming. Slight exaggeration, but more than I've done up till now.
If a show is going to film 20+ episodes for a single season, then the cast has to film at a very fast pace! Apparently, the actors playing the Price brothers had some solid conversations about their backstory, along with the writers. Dancy went on:
It was helpful for me, definitely for Justin, because he was jumping right in at the deep end, and also for the writers as they were figuring out the episode, to think about what their family is like and why these two guys who seem like they maybe should be pretty close are at loggerheads, and what was the impact of the fact that they had lost a sibling? And all that stuff.
Most guest stars come onto Law & Order to play characters with no connections to the leads of the show; that obviously wasn't the case for Justin Chatwin, and he had a key role in the episode. Would Nolan have agreed to a plea deal if Thomas hadn't accused him of being "reasonable" but "cruel" about wanting to keep their father on life support, especially after the death of their other brother, Christopher?
Hugh Dancy, who previously opened up about the kinds of Law & Order stories he'd like to do more of, was enthusiastic about the show exploring Nolan's backstory. When I asked how much of Nolan's backstory he knew but hadn't yet shown on the series, he responded:
I know a certain amount, and some of it's come up. Some of it was in terms of his professional history, [which] was referenced in the very first episode that I ever shot and then literally just didn't make the final cut for time. So I know that he used to be a defense attorney, and he's made the choice to move over to being a prosecutor, which is fairly uncommon. I knew the fact of him having lost a brother to addiction was something that was referenced in the first season that we shot, and that's always been there in the back of my mind as a deeply significant fact for anybody. It's not something that shows every day at work, but when this came around in this episode, and we started talking about family, I think I was fairly insistent that that's, if not the key to the whole thing, something that really needs to be subtly, I hope, dropped into the mix.
Considering that the first episode of the Law & Order revival was several years and more than 50 episodes ago, I think fans can appreciate how thoughtful he's been about his character in keeping Nolan's earliest backstory in mind throughout his four seasons so far. Even as Nolan went through the loss of Sam Waterston's DA Jack McCoy and a rough start with new DA Nick Baxter, the backstory was still present. So, isn't it fitting that one of Dancy's most frequent scene partners be part of this storyline?
Nolan Opening Up To Maroun (Begrudgingly)
Nolan and Maroun worked closely together on the homicide/assisted suicide case, and she was on hand to meet his brother both times he came to the office. The first meeting with Thomas was certainly friendly, but there was tension between the brothers the second time around. The ADA gently asked what was wrong when her boss was visibly shaken later, and Nolan actually opened up to her about his dad.
Would he ever have opened up to her about his personal life, if not for his brother directly showing up to the office? I asked Hugh Dancy that very question, and he said:
There's not a chance in hell that he would have shared any of this. [laughs] He's not an automaton, and I can imagine him potentially offering some of this up if something was happening in her life and he was able to empathize with her. Because they have a pretty close relationship, even if I have threatened to fire her from time to time. But no, he wouldn't have brought it up, because it's still in this episode, it's still happening. It's all happening right then, and it's very alive for him. So I think his instinct would be absolutely not to talk about it.
Maroun has shared some of her past with him, and he's well aware of the tragic loss of her sister, so Dancy and Odelya Halevi have played slightly more vulnerable scenes with each other in the past. The Hannibal alum addressed getting to play that kind of scene with his co-star in the latest episode:
It's great. I think that's a really interesting relationship anyway, because they're kind of peers, but obviously I'm her superior on one level in a way that any work partner is. You're together probably most of your waking hours. Any time we get a chance to do more than just move forward with the plot, I'm glad of it.
All in all, it was an emotionally draining episode for Nolan Price as a character, but a fun episode for Hugh Dancy as an actor. So, what is it like for him when he gets to play very personal stories on a show that is famously procedural? He explained:
It's atypical, for sure. [laughs] It's fun, and I know that [the writers] have been doing this more consciously this season in trying to find ways to organically relate whatever's going on in these people's work lives, to sometimes to what might be happening outside of the office or the precinct, or whatever it might be. And that's fun. It just adds another color to what we're doing.
It remains to be seen if/when Law & Order will revisit Nolan's family again in Season 24. The brothers allowed their father to die peacefully rather than prolong his life with a feeding tube, so that part of their lives is over. That doesn't mean that Thomas Price can't turn up again for a reunion with his brother, right? My fingers are crossed with new episodes continuing to release on NBC Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET!
As always, Law & Order is followed on Thursdays by Law & Order: SVU, but the wait is still on for when Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 5 debuts as a Peacock streaming original.
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