After so many hours of marathon Law and Order: Special Victims Unitviewers end up wondering: How do the actors convincingly play corpses? And do they have breaks to breathe?

Fortunately, Ask us is here to find the answer. It turns out that it’s not easy to control eyelid movements, a slight breath or even, in a tight close-up, a pulsing vein, which is why some actors specialize.

While taking us on tour for NBC St-Denis Medicalactor Mekki Leeper recalls speaking to one of these corpse kings: “The actor told me he auditions for corpses all the time and always books them.”

The professional has a foolproof strategy for determining when to breathe. “He holds his breath as long as he can and listens to the scene over and over again,” Leeper said. “When a main character speaks, he knows that this person is going to be filmed. That’s when he quickly catches his breath.

Although it takes skill, many people seem to have a death wish. Mariska Hargitay said Seth Meyers that the stars always ask him for a Law & Order: SVU guest place – like a lifeless body.

“All the famous people, you know what they want? To be a corpse,” she said in an interview in October. “It’s so weird.”

Meyers, however, didn’t think it was that weird. He revealed he was one of the celebrities who asked to play dead on the NBC show.

“I wanted to be a corpse. During the writers’ strike of 2007-2008, I met all these Law and order writers, and I was like, ‘I want to make a cameo, but I just want to be a corpse,'” Meyers recalled. “And they were like, ‘Oh my God, we’d love to have you on the show.’ But I said to myself: “OK, but I’m a dead person.”

His agent sent him a script, but Meyers was disappointed to find that he would have lines to memorize. “I was like, ‘I don’t want lines, I just want to be a dead person in the park.'”

Hargitay revealed that the same thing happened recently with another star.

“This happened to me with a great model… I discovered that she loved my show. So I said, “Oh my God!” I went to the writers and asked, “Can she be in the show?” And she said she wanted to be a corpse, but then I said, ‘No, no, we have this big role for you,'” Hargitay recalled. “I called her back, I said, ‘Look, we got this.’ We’re going to have you on the show. She said, “Oh no! No, no, no, no, no, I want to be a corpse.’

She joked: “It happens all the time!” Why don’t these famous people want lines? »