Peter Muller Scanavino (born February 29, 1980) is an American actor. He currently stars as ADA Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr. in the long-running NBC crime/legal drama series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Early life

Scanavino grew up in Evergreen, Colorado, a community in the foothills of the Denver metropolitan area. He is of partial Italian descent through his paternal grandfather, who emigrated from Turin.^[3] Both his parents were in the medical field but encouraged him and his older brother to pursue the arts. He had no inclination towards acting until he participated in a high school production of Hamlet.^[4]

Scanavino studied at Boston University and decided to change his major to acting, but did not pass the audition.^[5] He dropped out and moved to New York City where he took classes at Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.^[4]

Career

Since 2005, Scanavino has had dozens of minor roles in theater, films and on television, most notably Deception (2008), The Good Wife, and The Blacklist.^[6][7]

In 2005, Scanavino guest-starred on the NBC crime-drama series Law & Order: Criminal Intent in the fifth-season episode "Diamond Dogs" as petty criminal Johnny Feist. He was also a guest on Law & Order as a suspect who was a graphic designer in the 2009 episode "Just A Girl in the World".

In 2010, Scanavino took some time away from acting to pursue his interest in cooking. After graduating with a certificate in Culinary Arts from The French Culinary Institute in New York, he began a brief stint working in the kitchen of Dan Barber's Michelin-starred restaurant Blue Hill in Greenwich Village.^[8]

In 2013, Scanavino guest-starred on the long-running NBC crime-drama series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in Season 14, Episode 13, "Monster's Legacy", as Johnny Dubcek. The same year, he starred in the independent romantic-comedy film Mutual Friends, directed by Matthew Watts.^[9][10]

In 2014, Scanavino joined SVU in its sixteenth season, this time as Dominick Carisi Jr., nicknamed Sonny, a new SVU detective. Initially in a recurring capacity, Scanavino was promoted to the main cast in the fifth episode of the same season. According to SVU Executive Producer Warren Leight, Carisi "come[s] in and shake[s] things up" and is "a guy who maybe needs a little bit of refining."^[11][12]

Scanavino noted that Carisi is "a total outsider. He's brusque and he doesn't really get the nuances and he's not very experienced so he puts his foot in his mouth a lot of times. But he's learning. He's picking it up. I think he's a good detective, but he's got a lot to learn on how to approach cases."^[13][14]

Scanavino starred in an episode of Netflix's 2020 anthology series Social Distance as the father of his real-life son, Leo Bai-Scanavino.^[15]

Personal life

Scanavino is married to painter Lisha Bai, with whom he has three children.^[16][17][18]

Scanavino is a fan of the New York Islanders.^[19]

Filmography

Film

Television