A month before the new season of Law & Order: SVU (premiering tonight at 10 pm/ET, NBC) began, TVGuide.com caught up with Tamara Tunie, who plays unflappable medical examiner Melinda Warner. On the set of her directorial debut, See You in September, which is slated for a 2008 release, Tunie talked about her "day job" over breakfast.
Dealing with the deceased has never been a problem for Tunie, who was raised outside of Pittsburgh, where her father was an undertaker, so Tunie "grew up in a funeral home." "As a young adult," she says, "I helped my father by doing women's hair. I've been around dead people — it's not a big deal." Though many of her scenes take place around the victims of gruesome crimes, it never gives her the chills. "I certainly had been in a morgue before, so that wasn't new. I've been seeing
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Law & Order: SVU's Tamara Tunie will make her feature-film directing debut with See You in September, an indie romcom starring Justin Kirk (Weeds), Estella Warren (my occasional dream) and David Eigenberg (Sex and the City).... Also per Variety, Disney has big-screen dibs on the Brit lit hit The Dangerous Book for Boys (shop Amazon.com).... Jane Leeves (Frasier), Caitlin Wachs (Commander in Chief) and Colton James (7th Heaven) are among the cast for Endless Bummer, a 1984-set teen comedy.
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Question: Hope your time off went well. Can you give us some Law & Order: SVU scoop please?
Answer: Neal Baer says an upcoming episode "will revisit Benson's past again. She will reveal to a victim something that she's never [told anyone] before. It [concerns] her mother." Also in early '06, Tamara Tunie's medical examiner will get out of the morgue long enough to play detective alongside Chris Meloni's Stabler, and Lost's Malcolm David Kelley will guest-star in an episode that also marks the return of Annie Potts. Lastly, Baer says Benson and Stabler "will have a story where they take stock of their seven years together." These two need to stop taking stock and start getting a room.
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