Law & Order SVU has put Ice-T through some intense storylines during his over 25 years on the show. However, the series was planning to take the rapper’s street smart detective in a direction he hadn’t been in before. SVU briefly experimented with giving Ice-T a love interest. But the character’s romance proved to be shortlived.

Ice-T once revealed what happened to this ‘Law & Order SVU’ subplot

Romance has been a quiet part of SVU’s storytelling since its inception. From the beginning, the series has been teasing making lovers out of Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson and Chris Meloni’s Elliot Stabler. Additionally, SVU has toyed around with pairing Benson with other potential love interests as the series has gone on. But Hargitay isn’t the only SVU star to get in touch with her sensitive side.

SVU showrunners tried to explore Ice-T’s love life in the show as well. Fans once learned a bit more about Ice-T’s Fin Tutuola when an old friend of his, Phoebe Baker, came onto the show. Played by Jennifer Esposito, Baker was assigned to help Ice-T with a case. Eventually, a romance was teased between the two.

“Funny thing about the romantic storyline. When we came back from Covid, they said, ‘You’re getting married,’” Ice-T once told Smashing. “I’m like, ‘To who?’ They said, ‘Phoebe.’ I’m like, ‘Didn’t she tell me hell no two years ago?’ They said, ‘Yeah. Well, you guys are getting married.’ I’m like, ‘How?’ ‘You guys hooked up over Covid,’ they said. I said, ‘Do the fans know that?’”

But Ice-T asserted that the storyline didn’t go much further than it did. The veteran actor simply felt romance had little place in the type of show SVU was.

“So they tried one, and it didn’t work. We got close to marriage, but we broke up,” he said. “But Dick Wolf will be the first to tell you that this show is not about us. It’s about the stories. He’s not too much about getting into our storylines. It’s not a soap opera. It’s a show based on the crimes and the different characters that come in, and it has worked. You know, 24 years? I’m cool. I just come to work and chase the perps.”

Ice-T quipped that ‘Law & Order SVU’ refused to cast his real wife as his love interest

Ice-T wasn’t longing for love in real life. He’s been involved in a very bizarre but sweet marriage with wife Coco Austin for two decades. She’s even appeared on SVU alongside her husband, but the two have never played a couple on the show. Ice-T asserted that the writers liked to poke fun at keeping him and his wife apart on the long-running procedural.

“The writers tease me saying, ‘We got to find a girlfriend for you but it can’t be [your wife] Coco! America’s not ready for that.’ That would blow everyone’s brain cell out the back of their head,” he once told TV Insider.

Still, Coco showed range on SVU by playing several other characters. And although Ice-T wouldn’t have minded Coco, or anyone, playing his onscreen wife, he understood why SVU preferred Fin being single.

“She’s been in three episodes. She played a porn star, she was the girlfriend of an MMA fighter — we actually had a scene together — and she played [an entertainer] in another. But they won’t let her be with Fin. I’m cool with that. Also, on a Dick Wolf show, it’s better to just be a cop because if you get more of a personal life, you can end up dying. It would be nice to have someone for a couple of episodes, though,” he added.

Additionally, he didn’t believe in forcing his own ideas for Fin onto the show’s writers.

“I just kind of wait every year to see what the f*** is going on in Fin’s life. I don’t steer it; that’s not my job. My job is to do it until directors see what they want to see. I’ve been trying to do that for 20 years and it’s kept me employed,” Ice-T said.