Source: Entertainment Weekly

If you’re watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 27, you may be wondering, where is Fin? The actor who’s played the tough yet tender Sgt. Fin Tutuola since season 2 of the long-running procedural, Ice-T, has an answer.

“It’s just basically business,” he told TMZ in a video interview shared Monday. “They brought [Kelli Giddish] back, and at the end of the day, they couldn’t really keep both of us on full-time, as far as budget-wise. So they said, ‘Ice, we’ll have you come in and out this year.'”

The legendary rapper, actor, and mogul noted that “everybody wanted Kelli back” after the actress left the series following an 11-season run as Sgt. Amanda Rollins in 2022.

“We’ve got new cops and stuff like that,” Ice-T added, in a hopeful note to reassure fans, “I’m not leaving the show.”

The Law & Order extended TV universe encompasses four currently running series and an additional four that have already wrapped. Cast tenures on the various series have widely varied: SVU lead Mariska Hargitay, for one, has been with the series since the show’s premiere, while other recurring characters stay as briefly as a single season.

Ice-T is most definitely in the former camp, having continuously appeared on the spinoff since 2000. The “Power” musician was clear that he isn’t exiting the franchise any time soon, explaining that for now, his sole concern is “going into season 28.”

“This year they said, ‘Ice, we’re gonna work you a little less.’ Everything was cool with me, I understood. I said, ‘Are you getting rid of me?’ They said, ‘No way. We can’t imagine Law & Order without you,'” he recounted.

So far, he has appeared in half of the eight episodes from the current SVU season that have aired, while Giddish has appeared in six.

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives to Ice-T, Giddish, and NBC. A representative for producer Dick Wolf and his Law & Order franchise declined to comment.

“I’ve been on this show for 27 years. I’m not gonna say nothing negative about that show. They’ve taken care of me for so long, so I just wanna get to season 28,” he said, adding that the downtime has even had the positive effect of freeing him up to work on other projects: “I’m a hustler — you give me some free time, I’ll find a free dime.”

The very fact that SVU diehards are “upset” over his absence and continue to let him know feels like another insurance policy to the entertainer.

“I’m kind of glad the fans are upset, because what if I was missing and nobody cared? That would be something to worry about, but the fact that the fans wanted to see a little bit more Fin, that’s good,” he said.

In conversation with EW ahead of the season 27 premiere in August, Ice-T celebrated Giddish’s return as “great.”

“I love everybody that ever worked on the show; I never had a bad day with any of the costars or guest stars, [but] Kelli is a sweetheart. The way they shuffle the deck on SVU, nobody really knows what’s going on,” he said. But among the expansive SVU cast and crew, Hargitay especially “missed her — Kelli. I think the fans missed her. The fans had a lot to do with bringing her back.”

Season 27 heralded one of the more robust shakeups in recent SVU history, seeing not just Giddish’s return and Martinez’s exit, but the additional departure of Octavio Pisano, and the promotion of Aimé Donna Kelly to series regular.

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