L&O Remembers Jerry Orbach
For 12 seasons, Jerry Orbach and S. Epatha Merkerson were a team on Law & Order. He was the series' signature seen-it-all police detective, Lennie Briscoe. She was his all-business lieutenant, Anita Van Buren. Because he was fighting prostate cancer, Orbach left for a less strenuous role on L&O creator Dick Wolf's latest spin-off, Trial by Jury, which debuts on NBC in March. (He'll be seen in several episodes.) The 69-year-old Orbach's passing on Dec. 28 left both fans and colleagues shocked and saddened.
"It just never occurred to me that Jerry wouldn't make it," Merkerson tells TV Guide Online. "It just seemed that even death couldn't beat him."
The actress already felt devastated when Orbach exited the original series, she says. "It didn't hit me until the day we said goodbye to him, and there was such an outpouring of love for this dude. I bet it was a 20-minute ovation. It was more than I could take. H
