Tony Goldwyn on 'Law & Order,' Directing and Finding His Own Way

If you're a fan of the "Law & Order" franchise, you already know that actor Tony Goldwyn is in his second season playing District Attorney Nick Baxter, who replaced longtime character Jack McCoy when Sam Waterston stepped down after appearing in more than 400 episodes to pursue other projects.

Or perhaps you know Goldwyn, 64, from playing President Fitzgerald Grant on "Scandal," Carl Bruner in "Ghost" or Darren in "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives."

Well, you probably didn't know about that last one. But we covered it during our interview.

Goldwyn spoke with Next Avenue about "Law & Order," his experiences as a director and how being from a Hollywood legacy family doesn't do for your career what you may think it would.

What follows is our interview, edited for length and clarity.

Next Avenue: You're currently playing Nicholas 'Nick' Baxter, DA on 'Law & Order.' How did that come about and did you have to audition for the role?

Tony Goldwyn: No, I just got a call asking if I'd be interested because Sam Waterston had decided to retire so they asked me if I'd be interested in talking to them about replacing Sam. I had a meeting with Rick Eid, the showrunner, and he talked to me about the character that they were going to create in Nick Baxter and it sounded really interesting.

And it kind of was an easy 'yes.'

Did you have any apprehension at all about replacing someone who had been so iconic on the show for so many years?

No, not really – kind of the opposite. I felt sort of privileged to be doing it when I knew the character that they wanted me to do was going to be quite different than Sam's character. It would have been hard if I felt that I had to sort of play the same character or be what Sam was.

But they said that we're going to do something totally different. That was a really fun and interesting challenge for me. I'd never had the experience of stepping into something that had been going for a long time, you know? So that was kind of compelling, too, because 'Law & Order' really is an institution.

I'd worked on it before. I had directed an episode with Sam, and I had played a character in one of the other 'Law & Order' shows, 'Criminal Intent.'

So I was familiar with the world. It's such a New York institution that it felt like it'd be something great to be a part of.

My husband and I joke that anyone worth their ilk in acting has been on one episode somewhere of one of the many Law & Orders.

That's right, and some of them have been in multiple episodes on the same show playing different characters.

I saw that your first movie role was in 'Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.'

That's right.

As your first paid, professional role in a movie, there had to be something exciting about it.

Oh my God — the exciting part was doing a job. [He laughs.] I was so thrilled to be in a movie after I'd only done a couple jobs in the theatre up to that point. It was very exciting.

I think I had hoped that they would let me audition for a bigger part in it because I just played a small part, but that wasn't in the cards. I got killed by Jason and after one scene. [Laughs] I was very happy to be a part of it.

Not every actor wants to be a director and vice versa. What attracted you to directing, and what was the first TV or movie project that you directed?

Honestly, what attracted me to directing was the sort of tumultuous nature of an acting career.

In other words, in my earliest years, after 'Friday the 13th' and before 'Ghost,' I'd been just struggling to break through as an actor. Then I had this huge opportunity with 'Ghost,' which became a giant hit.

I'd been working in the theatre — it was in that same year of a big hit show in New York and in the theatre — and I thought, 'Okay, this is great. This is how it goes.'

Then I realized a couple years later that if your next movie doesn't make as much money, suddenly it sucks. So you don't necessarily have control over your career; you're at the mercy of what comes next. I thought that I needed to get more control over my career, if it's possible to do so, and I thought that would mean producing material that I could also act in.

I thought if I can find a script that I love and has a great part, next time I'm in a hit I could say all right, this is what I want to do, and I can kind of be the driver of the thing.

I wasn't thinking of directing. I found a script that I really loved, although I honestly didn't want to act in it. But I loved the material. I met the writer [Pamela Gray], and we worked on it together. She said, 'Would you help me produce this?'

I worked on a script with her for a couple years and got it to become really tight, and I started talking about the directors to directing it. I thought, oh my God, we've worked so hard on this, what if they screw it up? That's when I thought I needed to do this myself because I felt like I knew what it needed to be.

That was 'A Walk on the Moon'?

Yes. I had no idea if I could direct or if I would like directing, but I decided to go for it and give it a shot. It came together and suddenly I was directing a feature.

It did well and got a good response. Then I searched for other projects to direct.

I directed a couple of movies and then television. That was a really interesting kind of workout — to direct an episode of TV where you didn't have a whole movie on your shoulders. That's why I directed a little TV as well, as I was developing features. Now it's been 25 years.

'Ezra,' my fifth movie, came about because my oldest friend in the world, his name is Tony Spiridakis, is a wonderful screenwriter. We were best men at each other's weddings and godfather to each other's kids and stuff. He wrote this movie inspired by his experiences with his autistic son, whom I've known since he was a baby.

I had read the script over the years as a friend, and a couple years ago he called me and he said he'd been working on it for a decade and asked if I'd take a look at it. I read it and was so moved by it. I said, we have to do this together, and I want to direct it.

We worked on the script together for about a year, and then it took another year to pull the movie together. Then it happened. Which is pretty fast for features. The last one I did took about eight years.

Oh my gosh.

For 'Ezra,' we cast Bobby Cannavale as the protagonist, the father role. It's a movie about a standup comic who's really hit a skid in his life. He's going through a divorce and he's living with his dad. He had been a very successful late-night comedy writer and his sort of difficult personality had gotten him blackballed in that world, and now he's doing standup.

He and his wife have an 11-year-old autistic son and a series of circumstances happen where there's a bit of a crisis; his son gets thrown out of his third school, and he's having behavioral problems. They need to decide what to do. The experts are saying this child needs to be medicated and put in a special school for autistic kids, and the father says no way. You're not going to destroy my son and crush his spirit, and the mother was just trying to cope, and they're going through a divorce.

He makes the unwise decision to sort of kidnap his kid in the middle of the night and take him on a road trip across the country to just get him away from all the people he feels are trying to destroy him.

Bobby plays that character, and Robert De Niro plays his father, and Rose Byrne plays his wife and the mother of the child, and this amazing young autistic boy named William Fitzgerald plays Ezra.

So, you cast someone with autism – that's fantastic.

Yeah. We knew from the beginning we were not going to cast a neurotypical actor to play Ezra. We did a search, and this kid, William, is just brilliant in the movie.

Bleecker Street Films released it in May [2024] and it's now streaming on Paramount Plus and Showtime. It's been a really great experience.

On the subject of family, your daughter, Tess, worked with you on 'Law & Order.' What was it like working with her?

Oh, that was great. They came up to me toward the end of last season and said, 'We arrived at this idea to create a character of your daughter, and how would you feel about Tess playing that character?

I loved that idea! So, Tess auditioned and it was great. They wrote a wonderful character for her and we just had a blast. It was so fun and she was great in the show — it's a really good episode. It was just joyous.

We had collaborated on a few things before. We made a short film together when she was still in drama school and that was really fun. She wrote it, we kind of co-directed it, and acted in it together. We like working together.

Your lineage is embedded in the film industry with your grandfather, Samuel [who founded motion picture studios and was a pioneer], your father [Samuel, Jr. who was a film producer], and your mom [Jennifer Howard, an actress], and it still wasn't a cake walk for you. I think people automatically assume if you had family in the business, you just walk right in.

It just doesn't work that way. You have to find your own way.

The biggest advantage to me was that I had a sense of what the industry was, and I had mentors. I could talk to my dad about a script or my brother [John] who's a producer [on projects such as 'Dopesick' and 'Dexter']. That sort of built-in knowledge that was very helpful.

But in terms of like, someone getting you a job, it just doesn't work that way. In fact, for me that part was harder because people felt very awkward if I'd be in a meeting and they'd know my dad or my brother.

I found that one or two meetings that I got as a result of my family were terrible because the people were doing it as a favor, and they felt awkward about it. And I felt awkward about it and probably didn't do a very good audition. So, you just have to kind of make your way.

You got started acting on the stage. When did you decide you were interested in acting in the first place?

Being from a show biz family I initially wanted nothing to do with it as a kid, and having the same last name was a drag in a way — we were living in Los Angeles.

Then I started doing plays in high school and just immediately from the very first second I read, it was like being shot up with a drug.

What play was it and what high school did you attend?

I attended a prep school in Colorado Springs, Colorado, called Fountain Valley, and it was 'Inherit the Wind.' I auditioned for one part, but I didn't get it. Then I got a one-line part. I had one line in the play.

I knew this was what I was going to do. I knew it was my passion. I didn't know if I could do it, but I knew I was going to try.

What do you like most about working on 'Law & Order'?

The people. It's an incredibly well-run show and to be a part of a big machine like 'Law & Order,' it's been going for so long and everybody involved is so committed to it.

I'm so grateful and happy to be there. It's a pleasure to go to work every day. It's really fun. There's no drama, no dysfunction; it's great.

Michele Wojciechowski Michele "Wojo" Wojciechowski is an award-winning writer who lives in Baltimore, Md. She's the author of the humor book Next Time I Move, They'll Carry Me Out in a Box. Reach her at www.WojosWorld.com. Read More