While Kelli Giddish may no longer be on Law & Order: SVU, she made quite an impact on the long-running drama in the more than 10 years she portrayed Detective Amanda Rollins. The actress played out a number of intense and personal storylines for Rollins and, all the while, she experienced a few pregnancies along the way. Most recently, Rollins welcomed her third baby and first with Dominick Carisi on the Season 25 premiere of SVU as part of the 2024 TV schedule months after Giddish welcomed her third baby and first with husband Beau Richards. Now, she’s opening up about dealing with three pregnancies while on SVU and “weighing 180 lbs.”
Because of the actress' pregnancies, they were actually written into the show for her character. Following Rollins’ surprise news in the Season 24 finale, Kelli Giddish told People what it’s been like balancing work and being a mom. She also mentioned a playful comment that her husband has ribbed her with:
My husband is like, 'I'm thinking it might be a record that one actress has had three babies on one show. Is that a record, by the way?
Since Kelli Giddish’s pregnancies were written into the show, it was also easy to write her character out while she was on maternity leave. Even so, it’s definitely not easy being a working mom, and that's especially true when you're on a show like SVU, which runs for more than 20 episodes a season. Luckily, Giddish received more than enough support from her L&O family and everyone watching while she was with child:
The love and support that I felt weighing 180 pounds on a national TV show on network TV. It didn't even faze me...they were all there to love and support me, and I was breastfeeding on set, and it just worked seamlessly.
It's sweet to hear just how accommodating and respectful everyone was on the set of SVU when Kelli Giddish was pregnant. Unfortunately, many women still find themselves in workplaces that aren't so eager to respond to certain needs when they're expecting. To hear that a major network TV show did just that for one of its own really speaks volumes.
Kelli Giddish returned to SVU for the Season 25 premiere, which introduced Rollins and Carisi’s newborn baby. Since she officially left SVU in the middle of Season 24, Giddish won't be popping up all that often moving forward. But, with Carisi still very much part of the show, fans will surely get frequent updates on her as new the baby.
As of now, the longtime Law & Order actor doesn’t seem to have any upcoming projects, meaning that, for the first time, she might be spending as much time with all three of her children and her husband as she wants. She definitely deserves some downtime with her family, especially given the work she's put in over the years. Here's to the power of working mamas!
Fans can watch Kelli Giddish kill it as both a mom and a detective on Law & Order: SVU by streaming past seasons with a Peacock subscription.
