Donna Lynne Champlin.

Ryan Jensen

Share on Facebook

Share on X

Google Preferred

Share to Flipboard

Show additional share options

Share on LinkedIn

Share on Pinterest

Share on Reddit

Share on Tumblr

Share on Whats App

Send an Email

Print the Article

Related Stories

NBC Renews Three 'Chicago' Shows for 2026-27

'CIA' Scores Quick Season 2 Pickup at CBS

It’s the kind of experience that, as Champlin has learned, comes with the character-actor territory. Nonetheless, she’s since built up a formidable resume in Wolf’s TV empire alone: Over the past few months, she’s done standout work in installments of CIA and Chicago PD, after movingly portraying a survivor on Law & Order: SVU last year. (She’s also again appeared — and this time, survived the edit — in the flagship L&O series.)

“I’m the go-to Dick Wolf middle-aged traumatized woman,” Champlin cracks. More seriously, the versatile performer found plenty to mine in the parts: “Middle-aged women in general, we’re usually on the side, somebody’s mom or somebody’s secretary, so it is really great to see these roles in general — whether I’m playing them or somebody else is — that are so three dimensional and so thoughtful. It makes playing them like riding on a rollercoaster, as opposed to pushing up a boulder uphill.”

Champlin in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Peter Kramer/NBC via Getty Images

Champlin is best known for her award-winning turn as Paula Proctor in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the CW’s musical critical darling toplined by Rachel Bloom which ran for four seasons, as well as her starring Broadway turns in Sweeney Todd and Billy Elliot. She works consistently, amassing at least one screen credit for every year since 2010, and tends to pop even in the smallest of roles. Most recently, she played a detective across the Nicole Kidman limited series The Perfect Couple and acted opposite Viola Davis in The First Lady.

In a time of industry consolidation, Champlin admits the market is slimmer than it’s been in the past. “I don’t know how it’s going for others, but for me as a middle-aged Caucasian woman, it’s slow,” she says. “But I feel like the quality of what I’m getting writing-wise, character-wise is much higher. I’ll get down to the wire and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, it was between you and somebody else.’ And then I find out that somebody else is, like, Melissa McCarthy! Part of me is like, ‘Bummer.’ And part of me is like, ‘Oh my God, are you kidding?’

“There’s not as much work and everyone’s fighting for the same gig,” as she sums it up.

When she gets the part, Champlin proves herself as a pro. The demands of network television have it that production must move extremely quickly, even on shows with material as intense as SVU. “At one time in that shoot, I was in the witness box, and Norberto [Barba], our director, was like, ‘Okay, let’s take it from the part where she’s crying, ready?’ while me and Mariska [Hargitay] were just telling each other dirty jokes. I was like, ‘Oh, can I just get 10 seconds?’” Champlin says. “A magician never tells their secrets, but there are techniques to all of it for me. That makes me a better actor on set because a director can say to me, ‘Can we take it from the part where you’re hysterical?’ and it’s not like I need five minutes. Give me 10 seconds, hold on, and then we’ll go.”

Champlin, who trained at Carnegie Mellon University, brings these skills to bear in a range of environments that, for another kind of actor, might feel restricting. On Chicago PD, she played a mom hallucinating the return of her dead child, and whose mental struggles lead to physical altercations with those trying to help her. “There I relied on my technique even more because it was fight choreography and wrestling,” she says. And on CIA, which is in its first season, Champlin was asked to impro

Donna Lynne Champlin on Guest Starring in 'Law & Order,' 'CIA' and More