L&O: SVU's Tamara Tunie Sees Dead People
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
