"Law & Order" has been switching things up in Season 24 by peeling back the curtain on characters' personal lives. This week, Detective Vincent Riley sees his worlds collide when his family drama overlaps with a case at the 27th Precinct.
Reid Scott, who's portrayed Riley since he joined the squad last season, also found his personal and work lives colliding when he learned Ryan Eggold would play his troubled younger brother, Matt Riley, in an episode.
The episode, appropriately titled "Big Brother," airs Thursday, and in it, Detective Riley is put in a difficult position when Matt is connected to a murder investigation.
Scott has an off-screen history with Eggold, who's known for his work in the NBC dramas "The Blacklist" and "New Amsterdam."
He opens up to TODAY.com in an interview about his friendship with Eggold, the "myriad" of differences between their characters and why he's "excited for the audience" this season.
Reid Scott on Ryan Eggold portraying his brother on 'Law & Order'
Entering his second season, Scott says his character is “starting to really fit and feel comfortable.” He credits co-star Mehcad Brooks, who plays Riley’s partner, Detective Jalen Shaw, and the team of writers and directors for helping him “find” his character and shape him into who he is.
“We carved out a really interesting guy,” he explains, “and then this season, we just got to take him so much deeper, which has been a real treat for me."
He adds he's really "getting to peel back the layers," especially in the upcoming episode with Eggold, and getting the chance to look into Riley's backstory "and see some of the complications of the past and his family life."
"It's really fun, and there's a lot more to go," Scott says. "I can tell there's a lot more to explore."
Scott and Eggold go way back. As Scott explains, he and Eggold met in the early 2000s through a USC alumni group after Scott "fell in" with them "by virtue of living in Los Angeles." (Eggold attended USC, Scott did not.)
"We kept up a nice sort of friendship, and then we did a movie together," Scott says, referring to the 2013 film "Beside Still Waters."
"We were all kind of sequestered in this cabin in Michigan for about a month, and we just had the greatest time," Scott recalls.
He adds his friendship with Eggold continued from there, and they would bump into each other over the years and discuss wanting to work together again.
Scott describes Eggold being cast as Riley's brother as "a great opportunity" since they are both "in the NBC family."
"We just had a blast," he says. "He was just such a breath of fresh air and a great way to kind of really kick off the beginning part of our season. And he was — it was amazing."
On screen, however, the Riley brothers couldn't be more different. Scott describes the differences between the two as "myriad."
"He went one way in life, and I went another," he explains. "Vincent Riley went down the path of, maybe not the straight and narrow, but he's a cop. He's a detective, and his brother went the other way and has some very shady contacts and some very questionable lifestyle choices, at least according to Vincent."
He adds the two are "on opposite sides of the law, a lot, and they butt heads. There's a lot of love there. You can tell that they're a tight family, but they definitely subscribe to the idea that blood is thicker than water."
And like many real-life siblings, Eggold's character knows how to push his brother's buttons.
"I think Ryan's character really drives my character up a wall," Scott says.
He adds that Riley spent "a good amount of his life digging his brother out of trouble," which is something that is "just really starting to wear thin when we pick up in this episode."
The dynamic reminds Scott of the movie "State of Grace," which he explains has "very similar themes of family members being pitted against each other, one a criminal and one a cop."
“We really got to play with all of those nuances and those really deep kind of emotional levels of it,” he says, which is “something new” for “Law & Order.”
Reid Scott on 'Law & Order' getting personal in Season 24
"We don't get to see a lot of the personal backstories of our detectives," Scott says.
He says this was "a very conscious choice" on the part of the writers and producers.
"I had a long talk with Rick Eid, our showrunner, about that and that this season was a concentrated effort to really let the audience in to these characters a bit more so that we not only care about the case, the way we always have with the show," Scott explains, "but we care about the people who are investigating the case, we care about the people who are trying the case, we care about the people who are being investigated."
"It helps this show find a brand-new gear after 24 seasons," he adds, "which I think is just really cool."
In addition to Riley and Brooks' Shaw, who are the investigators on the cases, the audience is starting to get to know their new boss, Lt. Jessica Brady, who's portrayed by Maura Tierney.
Scott has been a fan of Tierney's for years and says she "fits right in."
"She's someone who I actually used to emulate at a certain point in my career because she's one of those rare television stars who can handle comedy and drama, and I always wanted to try to thread that needle as well," Scott says.
He says they make each other laugh and "have a great time" between filming scenes and that the team especially enjoys watching Tierney's Brady interrogate suspects.
"She's brilliant," he says.
As for the people trying the case, "Law & Order" has a star-studded team in the district attorney's office: Tony Goldwyn as DA Nicholas Baxter, Hugh Dancy as EADA Nolan Price and Odelya Halevi as ADA Samantha Maroun.
"I think this particular episode is really emblematic of this new season at large," Scott says.
While the focus now is on Riley's backstory, Scott teases there's "so much more to come, between learning more about Shaw's backstory, and Brady's backstory, and our attorneys' backstories, and Baxter's backstory."
"I'm excited for the audience this season, because they are going to get a brand-new 'Law & Order,'" he says. "It still delivers on all the fronts that they've come to love, but it really just — it just takes it up to a whole new level."
"Law & Order" airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on NBC and streams the following day on Peacock.
(Peacock is part of our parent company, NBCUniversal.)
