Law & Order: SVU's Jelani Alladin On What President Obama Had To Do With Getting Cast As Manhattan's Newest ADA

Assistant District Attorney Aidan Hawkins hasn't been around "Law & Order: SVU" long, but the actor who plays him hopes the new ADA has already started to make audiences think of another driven young lawyer with very lofty goals.

"My guiding light when I was auditioning for the role was, like, 'There has to be more than one Obama,'" Jelani Alladin — who'll next appear in the show's landmark 600th episode airing Thursday (9/8c, NBC) — tells TVLine. "That is my thing for Hawkins: If that is the top of the ladder, SVU is actually a great start. Because I get to balance justice with reaching people and touching people and actually helping people, practicing law and practicing empathy."

Indeed, Barack Obama parlayed his start as a civil rights attorney into a political career that involved positions in the Illinois State Senate and the United States senate before declaring his candidacy for the presidency in 2007; he was elected in 2008 — the first Black president in American history — and reelected in 2012.

There's an established pathway, is all we're saying. And even before the season started, "SVU" showrunner Michele Fazekas told TVLine that Alladin's character might not have the same long-term motivations as Carisi & Co. She noted that Hawkins is Harvard-educated and from a well-off family, "and he's not there to make his career SVU. He's going to be there for a couple of years, put away some bad guys, and then he'll be a politician."

Michele Fazekas made sure to stress that Hawkins' choices don't indicate that he's not a skilled litigator, nor that he doesn't care about the work. "He does," she said. "He just doesn't treat it like it's his entire life, which in some ways is a much healthier way to deal with it."

To wit: When Capt. Olivia Benson (played by Mariska Hargitay) visited Hawkins at his place after work in the Season 28 premiere, he was entertaining friends. (Friends! From outside of the office! A rarity in the world of the 16th Precinct and its denizens.) At the time, Benson was skirting the ethical line, trying to get Hawkins to acquiesce to a legal strategy Carisi would've vetoed — and it worked.

Jelani Alladdin says that the new ADA and the veteran police captain are of a similar makeup. "It's like when two people are sitting across the room and they can clock that they both have the same kind of drive and passion for life," he explains. "The same is happening with Hawkins and Benson, and I think we're going to see that continue to evolve throughout the season."

Similarly, he adds, Hawkins and ADA Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino) aren't all that different — but the two may have to dig a bit to find their commonalities. "As I see it, it's the Staten Island vs. the Gen Z, Upper East Side," Alladin says. "It's a battle of philosophies. It's interesting, because I feel as though we could be oil and water, or we could both be the same thing. Deep down, we actually could be fighting for the same thing."

In what the show has shot so far this season, "the relationship is an ongoing evolution of two people from completely different generations of practicing law, finding a way to work together," he continues. "There is the potential for a team here."

Jelani Alladin is no newcomer to series television: His TV resume includes "Fellow Travelers," "The Walking Dead: The World Beyond," "Blue Bloods," and "9-1-1: Nashville," and his first-ever guest-starring credit was on a 2020 episode of Dick Wolf's "FBI." (Musical fans also may recognize him as Kristoff in the original Broadway cast of "Frozen.") However, he recalls, the first time he stepped onto the "SVU" soundstage wasn't just another day at work.

"It's actually kind of emotional to me, how they've embraced my working with them, particularly people who've been here so long," he says of the long-running procedural's core cast. "These are TV legends. We know them. The minute we see a photo of them, we recognize exactly who they are.

"I'm just there to soak up everything they can offer, like a sponge," he says, then grins. "And also put a little new energy, new blood in the mix."