‘LAW’ AND MERKERSON

With the good actors, you never really know where the person ends and the character begins. But it’s a territory worth exploring, especially with S. Epatha Merkerson, who plays Lt. Anita Van Buren on NBC’s “Law & Order.” Her character forces 30 million viewers each week to consider such matters as gender, race, law, order and the workplace.

Van Buren was one of the first and is still one of the few female black characters in network television to hold a position of power--standing over the desks of white professional men telling them how to do their jobs. According to Merkerson, 44, the most important thing to know about her is that she’s first and last an actor.

So, let’s start with the actor’s journey.

After graduating in 1976 with a degree in acting from Wayne State University in her hometown of Detroit, Merkerson landed a job with a children’s theater in Albany, N.Y. A year later, she came to Manhattan looking to hit the big time.

She managed to pay the rent with her acting, but it took almost a decade before she started to break through to television, film and Broadway. Merkerson says her first really good job in television came in 1986 when she was hired to play Reba, the Mail Lady, on “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” with Paul Reubens. Since then, she has appeared in television series such as “Equal Justice” and such feature films as “Terminator II.”

Her big break came in 1990 with a role in August Wilson’s “Piano Lesson.” Merkerson played Berneice in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway production that included Charles Dutton, and she was nominated for a Tony Award as best actress. In 1992, she won an Obie Award for her work in the play “I’m Not Stupid.” The following year, she joined the cast of “Law & Order.”

From the start, Dick Wolf, the creator of “Law & Order,” had a “good idea of what he wanted Van Buren to be,” Merkerson says. And, to her relief, it did not involve any stereotypes.

Wolf and his producers gave Merkerson some room to interpret Van Buren, and her first decision was to wear a wig--a matronly, slightly teased bubble of straightened hair. The wig makes Van Buren look older and more tightly wrapped than Merkerson does in her natural hair (which she describes as “just twisted”).

Arthur Forney, supervising producer of “Law & Order,” says that’s the great challenge of the Van Buren role, because everything is stacked against Merkerson. A standard scene has detectives Briscoe and Reynaldo “Rey” Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) coming into her office to discuss their investigation. Both characters are stars, while she’s a supporting player. “As an actor, she has to have the strength and the power to take control of the room in the middle of a scene and make it happen without anyone noticing the effort. That’s not something easily done, but she does it,” Forney said.

In addition, Merkerson says, having a woman in the role of lieutenant makes the scenes more charged dramatically.

“It could work with a male, but because we have the female and the male, it gives it a whole other texture,” she says.

“It’s an evolution.”

“Law & Order” airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on NBC; weekdays at 8 and 10 p.m. on A&E.;