Law & Order SVU and Oz - What do they have in common?
 

Three of the main characters:

Law & Order SVU Character - Actor - Oz Character

Detective Elliot Stabler - Christopher Meloni - Christopher Keller

Psychiatrist George Huang - B. D. Wong - Father Ray Mukada

Detective Brian Cassidy - Dean Winters - Ryan O'Reily

Why? I can't figure out what the connection between these two shows is. Is it just friends recommending each other or what?

It's actually B.D. Wong in the show. :)

It's the fact that they both film in NY. Not alot of actors are in NY, so I would imagine that they get pretty good shots at other roles.

There are actors from Oz on all 3 of the Law & Order shows.

I'm assuming you meant that tongue-in-cheek.......

More like shooting schedules that are opposite each other, so pretty much holding down two jobs during each show's down times........

In addition to what Deftones17 mentioned, there is the fact that Oz is a Barry Levinson show just like my old favorite Homicide. Homicide did a least a couple of crossovers with Law & Order back in the day and the creators were also nice enough to let Richard Belzer take his Jon Munch character from Homicide over to L&O:SVU.

Even though the production companies for Oz and L&O are different, I think it's a safe bet that there's a buddy system that helps people who appear on Oz in getting roles on Law & Order shows.

Plus...
 

The brilliant J.K. Simmons, who plays Vern Schillinger on OZ, is a much nicer character, the pleasant-natured Psychiatrist Emil Skoda in the Law and Order universe.

Yeah, it was partly tongue in cheek, but compared to LA, I'm sure NY probably only has 1/2 the actors. :)

Christopher Meloni is playing Mark Furman in the Scagel(spelling?) murder trial movie
can we say type cast?

plus that movie is on USA, which shows reruns of each weeks SVU the following sunday (or some day like that)

Typecast? Maybe.

What I can definitely say is: no actor, no matter how great, can polish that turd. Furman's a dick, simple as that.

(Wonder if Meloni gets to tell that knee-slapper of Fuhrman's about "A fat lip and a job" on screen?)

Oops, my bad :) Thanks for the responses. I'd forgotten about Shillinger and his L&O alter ego.