Serena Southerlyn

Portrayed by actress Elisabeth Röhm, Serena Southerlyn is the longest-serving ADA in the history of the original Law and Order series. She has preceded Abbie Carmichael, and succeeded by Alexandra Borgia. She has served under two different District Attorneys, Nora Lewin and Arthur Branch, and has been partnered with Jack McCoy for four seasons (12th season up to the first half of the 15th season).

Backgrounder

From the Law & Order "Crime Scenes" book by Dick Wolf, pages 146-147. Courtesy of Röhm with a View.

Although every cast change on Law & Order is given a lot of thought, season twelve's vacancy in the district attorney's office brought a special challenge. Jack McCoy had been the executive ADA for seven seasons and in that time, had had three female deputies, each with very different and distinctive personalities.

I knew that I was going to give McCoy another female ADA, but it was necessary to devise a character that could maintain a level of dramatic conflict without seeming reiterative. I decided that the best solution was a character that, initially, would be a mixture of predecessors Kincaid and Ross, yet whose own perspective and prejudices would evolve over time. For this new character, Serena Southerlyn, I selected Elisabeth Röhm.

In her backstory, I gave Southerlyn an East Coast sophistication. She's the daughter of a Wall Street lawyer and has had an Ivy League education. Having lived a relatively sheltered life, Southerlyn was curious to explore other dimensions. Thus, rather than take a job in the private sector, she chose to work in public service. Fresh out of law school, her first job was in civil investigations. Finding the work unsatisfying, Southerlyn transferred into the distric attorney's office, when McCoy offered her the job as his deputy. She first appears in the episode "Who Let The Dogs Out?"

Like Kincaid, Southerlyn is young, unmarried, and from a privileged background. Also like Kincaid, Southerlyn comes to the job with an eagerness to learn and her early relationship with her boss is tutorial. But, unlike Kincaid, Southerlyn does not come with her predecessor's staunch feminist agenda. Like Ross, she is more interested in the business of the law. While Kincaid became more self-assured as time went on, Southerlyn has more quickly displayed the kind of strength seen in Ross. Although McCoy is sitll her mentor, Southerlyn has been straining at the leash.

That Southerlyn traded in her pearl necklace look for a more urban wardrobe is emblematic of her growing understanding of the real world. Her wide-eyed naivete has, thus far, been transformed by the eye-opening realities of an imperfect justice system.

Ultimately, like Kincaid and Ross, Serena Southerlyn cares about doing the right thing.

Random Tidbits

Courtesy of this site and Law & Order: The Guide.

Coming Out

While Röhm's departure in the series came as no surprise, the character's exit stirred a lot of talk among fans. Some were offended, some were overjoyed, but all were baffled and caught off-guard with the revelation that came with it.

In 15th season's episode "Ain't No Love," Southerlyn was fired by Branch for being too passionate and sympathetic, and that these traits essentially affected how she looked at the facts. Serena appeared stunned, then asked, "Is this because I'm a lesbian?" When Branch answered in negative, she said, "Good...Good." Then roll credits. There's a video on Youtube of that particular scene if you want to watch it.

From that week's Entertainment Weekly, page 22 on "Burning Questions":

Q: Upon being fired on Jan. 12th's Law & order, ADA Serena (Elisabeth Röhm) asked, "Is this because I'm a lesbian?" Who saw that twist coming?

A: Röhm did. Two weeks before shooting her last episode, L&O creator Dick Wolf came to her with a proposition. She could exit the show after four years "simple" or "splashy" and pitched Serena's sapphic secret. "I always thought Serena was gay," Röhm admits. "He was like, 'Shut up!' She was passionate about episodes that dealt with gay rights from the very beginning." Röhm says. She wasn't the only one to think so. "All my gay friends have been like, 'Please,she was always so tough.'"

In this particular video where she talked about Serena Southerlyn, Röhm revealed that she "secretly wanted her to be a lesbian for all five years." She felt that all the female characters have flirted with Sam Waterson's character (EADA Jack McCoy), and that she didn't want to be like them. She added, "But it was random. I mean, you don't know anything about this character and now suddenly you know she's gay?"

Criticisms

She's not the most-liked character in the franchise (in fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd say she's the most hated), but she holds her own. However, the criticisms are mostly lashed out at the actress portraying the character, Elisabeth Röhm. The audience's distate has become evident when an online petition was started to replace Röhm in the series. Many Law and Order fans have been overjoyed when the character left the series after four years.

Some of the points raised were:

  1. She is unpleasant to listen to because speaks in a monotone voice with little inflection. Moreover, she appears to be incapable of changing the tone of her voice even when the mood of the script demands it.
  2. Second, her facial expression barely changes during her scenes. Often, her face is blank and her eyes look glassy/glazed over; combined with her monotone voice, it gives the impression that she is reading off cue cards.
  3. Third, she does not 'react' to her co-stars lines; a large part of good acting is 'reacting'. Ms. Röhm usually appears to be impatiently waiting for her co-stars to finish speaking so that she can interject with her lines.

Furthermore, some fans felt that Southerlyn herself was a reincarnation of Claire Kincaid, and that she was "cold and robotic," and "personalityless and a pain in the ass."

External Links

For further reading, visit the character's Wikipedia page and IMDB profile.