Are Ice T and Kelli Giddish Friends in Real Life?
The two Law & Order: SVU stars quickly became on-screen buds when Fin got partnered up with Rollins over a decade ago.
After more than two decades on the air, the stars of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit have become thick as thieves. Of course, Mariska Hargitay’s sweet bond with Christopher Meloni is well known as they starred as Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler, but Ice T and Kelli Giddish also became fast friends on NBC’s crime drama.
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The rapper has starred on SVU as Sergeant Fin Tutulola since 2000, while Giddish joined the squad in 2011 as Detective Amanda Rollins. As partners, Fin and Rollins became a beloved and badass duo on SVU, supporting each other through tough times and having each other’s backs.
In real life, while they may not be fighting crime together, Ice T and Giddish appear to be just as close friends. Read on to find out what the two SVU stars have said about each other through the years.
Are Ice T and Kelli Giddish friends in real life?
Ice T and Giddish became friends in real life while starring as partners on SVU together. And they hit it off pretty quickly. Shortly after Giddish joined the SVU cast in Season 13, Ice T said that their similar work styles made it easy for them to initially get along off-camera as well.
“I learned that Kelli is a very low-maintenance woman, which is a very big compliment. Guys know that,” Ice T said in a 2012 video with Giddish, who laughed at her co-star's comment. “She comes in, knocks it out, no drama, no stress, and that’s a dream … She’s just so good, she knows her s---, and it’s just been easy. Me and her want to finish the scene. We don’t want to mess around, we want to knock it out, do it well, keep it moving.”
“It’s very difficult to try to do two layers of acting, which is act and then act like you like somebody you hate,” Ice T jokingly added. “It’s very easy, I get along with her.”
Years later, Ice T still had only kind things to say about his co-star. “Kelli is a sweetheart,” he said in a 2021 behind-the-scenes video. “She’s a nice girl.”
Ice T visited Kelli Giddish in the hospital after the birth of her first child
When Giddish welcomed her first child, son Ludo, in October 2015, Ice T and his wife, Coco Austin, went to visit the new mom and her newborn in the hospital.
“At the hospital with the newest SVU member 'Ludo,’” the rapper tweeted alongside a sweet photo of Giddish smiling as his wife held little Ludo in her arms.
Before she gave birth to her first child, Giddish spent some time with Ice T and Austin, who was also pregnant then with the couple’s daughter, Chanel Nicole. In September 2015, Austin posted a photo of the two moms-to-be, holding their baby bumps. “I love my homegirl @kelligiddish,” she wrote on Instagram. “It's so cool we're preggers at the same time!”
And once little Chanel was born, Giddish also visited the new parents and posed for a cute photo with their newborn daughter.
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Kelli Giddish says Ice T has a “huge heart”
In a 2012 interview with HuffPost, Giddish described Ice T and Austin as her “two favorite people” she’d met in the past year. “Ice, he’s got such a huge heart, and anybody that knows him would do anything for the man,” she said. “And he’s also just who he is, to the end of the line, always. He’s not going to take any s--- from anybody.”
Giddish has also said that her “favorite person to follow on Instagram” is Ice T’s wife and they've all hung out outside of work hours as well. “We’ve spent some time together,” Giddish told Us Weekly in 2015. “We all hung out over Labor Day.”
Kelli Giddish reveals the “crash course” in SVU television acting Ice T gave her
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When Giddish was cast as Rollins on SVU, she had just come from a theater background, and Ice T showed her the ropes of television.
“It was a bunch of scenes with Ice T,” she told IndieWire in 2022 about getting started on SVU. “I was a theater actor. I hadn’t done a lot of TV before I got the gig. I was on a soap opera, but it wasn’t like in my wheelhouse and in my body to know how to do it.”
Giddish added that there was some confusion at the beginning, but Ice T swooped in with some sage advice. “I remember them saying, ‘Cut, cut, cut.’ ... They were like, ‘Yeah, so be on your mark.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m pretty on it.’ And they were like, ‘No, no. You have to be on your mark. Like on it,’” she recalled. “And Ice goes, ‘Kelli, whenever I’m on my mark, I just hear the money going into my pocket. And when I’m off my mark, I hear it going outta my pocket.’ So that was a quick crash course in acting by Ice T.”
