Saffron Burrows Shares What Makes Detective Serena Stevens Tick on ‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent’

Saffron Burrows plays Detective Serena Stevens on Law & Order: Criminal Intent which currently airs on USA Network. Joining the successful, long-running series during its ninth season and paired with Jeff Goldblum, Saffron confessed that the biggest draw to Law & Order: Criminal Intent was the opportunity to work with Jeff Goldblum. She described Jeff as “a wonderful actor and a very, very witty intelligent man” and having worked with him previously on the film Fay Grim, she leapt at the chance to work with him again.

Saffron Burrows

Saffron added that another major draw was Dick Wolf simply because everything he has created has a great integrity. She also thinks his writing is smart, gritty and ultimately truthful. With that perfect combination of compelling factors, plus the fact the show was filmed in Manhattan, made the role enticing and simply too good to pass up.

Coming off a highly successful ninth season, Saffron commented that she was also incredibly surprised by the exuberance of the cast and crew. In fact, she found the team spirit and camaraderie uplifting and lovely to work with. Having worked mostly on films, she was also drawn to the rapport and rhythm that builds working with this familial enclave over a period of time. She felt particularly welcomed into this select group of people who had been working together for such a long period of time and appreciated how generous they were in embracing her into their world.

Reflecting back over this past season, Saffron remarked that her favorite episode was “The Disciple” in which her character deals with an intense death row case where the person may or may not have been wrongly accused. It was a revealing episode that delved a bit more into Detective Stevens’ character and Saffron would love for Stevens to continue on that trajectory. It was illuminating as to both Stevens’ background and Nichols and Stevens complex relationship. It portrayed that relationship in such a way that they were butting heads, but enjoying being around each other at the same time. So while their character’s instincts do not always align, they were still able to get back on track to solve the case. For Saffron, she found the interwoven personal drama and professional drama intriguing and fun to explore.

Saffron Burrows & Jeff Goldblum

Additionally, during the course of the season, Saffron has especially enjoyed the developing partnership between Stevens and Nichols. Because they use a lot of ex-cops to consult on the show, she has learned that being partners on the beat is a lot like a marriage and watching that dynamic unfold is fascinating. Thus, the partnership between Stevens and Nichols has an accumulative effect as they continue to work together and spend so much time together. There is a level of ease and comfort that begins to reflect through their interactions.

Saffron also shared that working with Jeff is incredible. He is one of the wittiest people she has met, with the perfect combination of intelligence and irreverence. She illustrated by explaining, “He takes care of me. He’s a gentleman. He’s very caring and loving and it’s great. . . . He’s very easy to work with. He’s incredibly respectful of everybody and treats people really well, which I like. He has amazing energy. He’s always the one at the end of a long day who has the most energy left when everyone else is flagging.”

As far as how the show is working to establish Stevens and Nichols in addition to maintaining a connection to the previously established seasons, Saffron expressed her gratitude for the show’s writers. She said that she and Jeff leave it up to them to keep the storylines connected and they have complete respect for the great job the writers have done maintaining the continuity. She was also effusive about how delicately the writers have created an environment where Stevens and Nichols are allowed to be very comfortable with each other with a gentle flirtation building between them. Plus, the writers have incorporated a degree of professionalism that shows that Stevens really loves her job and gets a kick out of it — she gets a great deal of satisfaction from doing her job well. Saffron also likes that there is warmth to Stevens and yet takes her job quite seriously, tackling it with appropriate urgency. The writing conveys this all effortlessly and it makes it a joy for her to portray such a multi-leveled character.

Saffron admitted, “I’m enjoying her own particular set of characteristics and the way that I’m allowed to develop a partnership with somebody. . . . Nichols’ background is a little bit more gentle and intellectual I think than [Stevens], which is a military one with my father in the military. . . . So I’m enjoying having someone unfold in front of my eyes . . . [and when] I’m given a new script and discover a little bit more about her.” In addition to peeling away the layers to her character, Saffron is also appreciative of how the writers do not patronize the audience. When there is a crime to solve, there is not endless melodrama about their private lives. Instead, they writers provide just a little bits of information that becomes a gentle reveal over time. For her, this is an attractive way to find out about someone’s life because it is subtly done and she enjoys it.

As for what to expect from the upcoming explosive two hour season finale on July 6th, Saffron shared, “There’s a very interesting turn of events with Jeff’s character . . . There’s a case that we deal with in the season finale that’s a very, very cool and a shockingly violent case, really and we decide we need help from an unusual direction. . . . It’s interesting for me because I get to find out a lot more about Nichols. And it’s a case that’s very disturbing and confusing and very hard to solve.”

Commenting on what it was like to work with F. Murray Abraham who guest-stars in the finale as Detective Nichols’ father, Saffron raved, “He’s wonderful. It was very exciting. . . there’s very, very intense sequence of events that takes place with F. Murray at the pinnacle of it all at the fulcrum, and then I’m sort of there witnessing what’s happened to my partner and how he’s being affected by that, and it’s incredibly powerful. What a wonderful actor. . . He’s terrific. There’s a lot of improvisation that went on, actually, in that episode. It was very alive.”

With those tantalizing teasers, be sure to tune in and watch the gripping two hour finale of Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Tuesday, July 6th at 9/8c on the USA Network.