Law & Order is still waiting for a renewal as Season 25 continues its run on the 2026 TV schedule, but it’s only a matter of time before we get an update. The show returned to its TV staple-dom years after the original run ended, and between the successful revival and numerous spinoffs, it’s hard to imagine life without the Law & Order franchise. Evidently, though, the flagship procedural nearly got canceled by the time Jill Hennessy joined the show.
Hennessy starred on the legal drama during Seasons 4-6 back in the ‘90s, so Law & Order wasn’t yet the behemoth it is today. SVU wasn’t even out yet. When Hennessy joined in Season 4 as Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid, NBC was close to pulling the plug, and it was all because of her and S. Epatha Merkerson’s addition to the show that the plug-pulling didn’t happen, as Hennessy recalled to Yahoo!:
