THE Law and order The brand has become much more than a TV show. It’s become an entire TV franchise with multiple spinoffs, but it’s also led Wolf Entertainment to diversify in other directions, including a new true-crime podcast. Law & Order: Criminal Justice System takes the style and tone of the NBC series and transposes it to the world of investigative journalism, with each season diving into a “ripped from the headlines” idea.
The podcast is expertly hosted by Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, who worked as a prosecutor in Brooklyn before venturing into media projects like Investigation Discovery True belief. CBR spoke to Anna-Sigga about being a Law and order fans and how what viewers love about the TV show is brought into the podcast. It also explains what audiences will find in Criminal Justice SystemThe first season of , which deals with the rise of the mafia.
CBR: You’ve done a lot of true crime work before; what was that about? Law & Order: Criminal Justice System What inspired you to present this podcast?
Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi:
One, came from Wolf Entertainment. I'm an old man
Law and order
fans — long before I got into the media. So it was exciting to me because of how they portray these cases, which is a world I've worked in for a long time. And then secondly, as a former prosecutor, this project of
by presenting the cases not in a scripted format, but rather told by the real people who worked on these cases and those who were affected by the crime, they won me over. They really combined the best of two worlds for me
in a project that, to tell the truth, I was really looking forward to getting involved with.
Fans will read the title and expect the same type of content they see in the best Law and order episodes. How would you say this feels? Law and orderand not just a podcast that uses the brand name?
I think it's true
Law and order
in many ways…
It has all the same storytelling vehicles that those who are used to watching and listening to
Law and order
are used to it. It's high stakes. It's well put together, storytelling-wise. These cases in and of themselves, by their very nature, are exciting, just like every episode of Law & Order.But it's also true of life in that this is a great system; it's not a perfect system. There are great men and women who do this work, but no one is perfect. And I think it shows the many facets very equally and in a way that
Law and order
does the same thing. They take people as they are, men and women doing the best job they can, giving it their all. They are still human, and we still slip up sometimes. We still have days when we are not at our best, or things happen that we don't expect and that get us down. And rather than it being written in a script, you hear it from those who have lived it, and lived it every day. That is very true for
Law and order
brand, but this time it is the people who have actually experienced these cases who say it.
Having also worked in television, how different is it to take a crime story and tell it in the realm of podcasts, without that visual component of a crime docuseries? And with the serialized nature of Law & Order: Criminal Justice SystemDid you discover something that couldn't fit into a 42-minute TV show?
What I love about podcasting is that you see the story in your mind. And if a story is told well, whether you're listening to it on your way to work or walking your dog or whatever people do when they listen to podcasts, you create that image in your mind. I think that's just as powerful as when you sit down and watch a well-told story on TV. If you know how to tell the story, you just have to make sure that the words take the audience there in the same way.
[What stood out] it's the depth of this organization. In this first season, we're dealing with the mafia and its hold on New York City. It's a spider's web. And when I say that, it's just names that lead to names you heard about in the '80s that come back to the surface [in] in early 2000, just to give an example.
It was really amazing to see the plot of this criminal organization. I don't think it's a spoiler alert to say that the names that pop up very quickly in the first few episodes, we might explore more deeply later in the series.
Like a Law and order fans but also someone who has been involved in the media for as long as you, what did you enjoy most about making this podcast? How much fun did you have or did you learn something new from this experience?
- Law & Order: Criminal Justice System is the first investigative podcast under the Law and order name.
- However, it is not the first Law and order podcast: successful spinoff Law and Order: Special Victims Unit has a dedicated podcast with interviews with the cast and crew.
- Wolf Entertainment has also produced scripted podcasts, including the crime drama Huntedwith Parker Posey as a U.S. marshal.
Both. I bring my own experience to the table, so I'm very familiar with analyzing these cases and diving deep, because that's what I did as a homicide prosecutor for years. And I've worked in media for well over a decade or almost a decade at this point, both in television and audio.
But working with the talent that both Wolf Entertainment and iHeart have brought to the table has taught me a lot and continues to teach me a lot. No one tells a story better than Wolf Entertainment, no matter what subject matter they tackle.
And iHeart has given us so much talent.To work on a project of this scale, you take really different players from different worlds, and we work together very honestly every day. That’s Wolf Entertainment, that’s iHeartPodcasts, that’s myself, that’s the different people we have on our teams. It’s really a collaborative effort with people who bring different skills to the table. Now, that has its challenges, because there can be a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but I think that’s what makes the best soup. Hopefully you get the best out of each of us.
It's a series for
Law and order
fans, because it’s going to give people what they’re used to from Wolf Entertainment. If you’re a true crime fan, it’s going to give it to you in the most insightful way, because you’re going to hear it from someone who lived it, not someone who read about it and is telling you that story. I think it’s important to know how our criminal justice system works, when it works, when there have been problems. We’re going to be addressing all of that in this series, this season, and hopefully for many more beyond.The most important thing for me is that [fans are] they will get what they are used to from
Law and order
brand, but they also took another step forward. You don't even need to know
Law and order
.
You can also get to the family that way, and work backwards. I think it really has a lot to offer. As a former prosecutor, I am very proud to be associated with it.
There have been so many other true crime books, podcasts, and TV shows that have proliferated over the past decade as the genre has become more popular, but that has also made it harder to find quality content. From your perspective with all your experience, what makes a great true crime project like Law & Order: Criminal Justice System?
Real crime has been my professional life. I have been a prosecutor since I graduated from law school. I have been a prosecutor for 21 years, 17 of them in homicide. I just talk about various criminal justice issues.
But it's always been important to me to start from the victim's perspective and be very victim-focused. I think people forget in true crime, too often for my taste, what it's really about, which is how real people are affected by these crimes in one way or another.Every story I tell, whether it's here in
Law and order
whether it isAnatomy of Murder
another podcast I do, television or talking about cases — I would like those who have lived through those cases [or] they have been affected by those crimes to be able to listen to how we tell them, to look at them and be comfortable with them, and to know that we are aware of what they have had to go through. This is a tension that should be in each of them.
I don't want to laugh at a murder case. There may be a moment when we can laugh lightly, because there are moments in the courtroom when jurors laugh when someone says something funny on the stand, and that's okay, because you have to break the tension when you're dealing with so much darkness. But never forget what we're talking about.
I think if we keep that in mind, then it's right to be fascinated and excited by these cases, because they're very interesting for so many different reasons.
I don't really believe that it has to be a mystery, because understanding how the evidence was collected or why something was a problem or didn't work can be just as interesting as a traditional mystery.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System streams Thursdays on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.