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Corey Cott, a 2012 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s acting program, joined NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU” (9 p.m. Thursday, WPXI) at the start of the 2025-26 TV season in a recurring role and got upped to a series regular about six episodes into the season. (Series star Mariska Hargitay called to give him the news of his promotion.)
Cott, who was previously a series regular on Fox’s 2020 soap “Filthy Rich” starring Kim Cattrall, plays Det. Jake Griffin, who’s new to the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit. He comes from an anti-burglary squad in midtown Manhattan. Early on, it’s suspected that Jake may be a spy, planted in Benson’s unit by Chief of Detectives Kathryn Tynan (Noma Dumezweni), who took Griffin under her wing when Griffin’s father was killed in the line of duty.
Griffin’s first scene last fall had him going toe-to-toe with Benson, an opportunity Cott’s gotten to play several times this season.
“She’s a true professional in every sense,” Cott said of Hargitay. “The reason the show is a success and has been a success for this long is because of her relentless pursuit of greatness and truth in every single moment, in every single episode. She never phones it in. She expects no one else to phone it in. But it’s a team effort. There’s no ego, it’s all team. And she surrounds herself intentionally with people that she knows can rise to the occasion.
“I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of one-on-one scenes with her this year, and I’ve grown so much as an actor just by observing her and seeing how she works, but also learning from her, getting direct ideas from her,” Cott continued. “Again, it’s never in a place of talking down or authority, it’s always [from] a place where we’re a team and we’re trying to make this as good as possible. It’s been a gift. And now I think I’m 15 episodes in, and I feel like I’m a part of the family and the team.”
Griffin is the son of a New York cop from Queens, so in his audition, Cott chose to give Griffin a bit of an accent, but not a full Joe Pesci dialect.
“He has a bit of a punch to him,” Cott said of Griffin, “and I thought [the Queens dialect] would help that.”
Cott said he spent a semester at CMU working on different English-based accents, but what he’s found most helpful about his studies in Pittsburgh can be applied more broadly.
“What makes Carnegie (Mellon) such a good program is it sort of rewires how you think about being an actor in general,” Cott said. “One thing I’m always aware of that I didn’t know before CMU and left very aware of was just being in service of those around you, that we’re actually in the service industry and the more you serve your acting partner and your scene partner and your fellow actors and crew, the better you look. It’s a very counterintuitive thing, because all actors inside just want to be praised and glorified. It can be a very self-aggrandizing industry and work, but actually the opposite [is true]. If you take your focus off yourself and focus on those around you, [focus on] how to make everyone else better, you’re actually better. And that’s something that was explicitly taught to me at CMU all four years.”
Cott said he had some idea of his character’s backstory when he began filming “SVU” last year, but certainly not all of it.
“Now that I’ve done a few different series, I’m convinced that an actor’s first job is to tell the story, and then an actor’s secret second job is to pick up clues in any way they can from any writers who are willing to give them clues about where their character is going,” Cott said during a break in filming episode 18 of 21 for the season. “I make every effort to pry and poke the writers and/or wardrobe, and/or producers to give me some sort of insight into where it’s going. But the thing is, the writers are figuring it out. They are about four or five episodes ahead of us, so they’re still figuring out stuff, too.”
Whether Griffin turns out to be a spy, whether he resolves the daddy issues that have been hanging over him in recent episodes, Cott defends his character.
“He has an almost righteous indignation that he’s going to do the right thing, even if it gets him in hot water,” Cott said. “When you’re in anti-crime and dealing with these punks on the street, that’s one thing. But when you’re dealing with victims of sexual assault, it’s just a much more sensitive protocol that’s required in order to deal with these victims. So Jake is given an education because his methods, not only do they not really work, they’re not appropriate for this this kind of work, and they can actually do more damage to the victims. The writers have done this very elegantly and eloquently, exposing his weakness in order to mature him and grow him in order to magnify his strengths. I think that’s why Benson ultimately believes in him pretty early on and can see his potential.”
Cott’s role as Det. Griffin is not his first time appearing on “SVU.” Back in 2016, he played a villain-of-the-week in an episode where his character was named Ellis Griffin.
“I think it’s just a beautiful, cosmic coincidence [that the characters have the same surname],” Cott said. “When I was sent the audition, the character was called Jake Griffin, and I assume if someone else had gotten the role, they’d be playing Jake Griffin, too. So it has nothing to do with me playing Ellis Griffin.”
But that didn’t stop fans from speculating.
“When I was cast and the announcement was made, I was tagged in a few different fan sites about how my characters are twin brothers, and [Jake] is coming to avenge his other brother,” Cott said. “I just had to laugh because they weren’t related whatsoever.”