LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME: Danielle Moné Truitt on the Task Force Twist and Upcoming Insight into Bell’s History

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Thursday, December 8 episode of LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME, “Last Christmas.”]

It’s a holiday miracle: the OCCB task force is staying together on LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME.

After surviving one heck of an ambush—thinking it was their last case together—Bell (Danielle Moné Truitt) broke the news to Lillian (Janel Moloney) that she wasn’t taking the promotion. (And for good measure, Bell utilized the sage in the task force, thanks to Whelan’s gift.)

But keeping the team intact will come with its own consequences.

“This is what comes with the territory,” Truitt tells Give Me My Remote, noting that whatever Bell does, someone (be it her team, her bosses, or her estranged wife) will be unhappy. “It’s not in the cards for her to be able to please everybody. But the thing that keeps Bell going is that she listens to herself. She listens to her heart. She follows her gut—and what she knows is right. And at the end of the day, she’s always going to end up being okay, because she’s a woman of integrity. She’s gonna do what’s right.”

In the immediate aftermath, Bell will have to contend with “whoever this new deputy inspector is going to be, because they’re going to find somebody else to do that job,” Truitt points out. “And then she’s going to be under that person. It’s going to be a weird dynamic, because that person is going to know that Bell was actually supposed to be in the position that they’re in, but she chose not to do it.”

“There are always going to be battles for Bell to fight and things for her to navigate,” she continues. “But she’s made it this far. She’s pretty stellar at what she does, so I think she’ll be able to navigate it just fine.”

Thankfully, one person she won’t be fighting in the near future is Stabler (Christopher Meloni). The partners got into it in the last episode, with him objecting to her not disclosing the task force was in danger. The tension between the duo remained in the early part of “Last Christmas.”

While it was uncomfortable watching Bell and Stabler be so out of sync, “it is always fun to shoot those scenes with Chris,” Truitt says with a laugh. “We get along very well, and then we have to be mad at each other. This episode, we got to ad lib at the end of the scene. I don’t know if it even made it into the show. But it was so funny.”

“We’re ad libbing and he’s talking all this crap about me, and then I like lay into him,” she continues. “When they say cut, everybody’s like, ‘Ooooooh.’ It was so funny. So we really do enjoy doing that, because I can argue with the best. Like my mom always used to say, I should have been a lawyer, because nobody beat me arguing. So it was really fun.”

The on-screen fighting did allow for Bell to confront Stabler about his insubordination and going around her—and it appears he may have actually listened.

“For the most part, in these few episodes we’re about to shoot, he is very much, ‘Sarge, is this okay with you?'” Truitt previews. “He seems to be showing more respect.”

But the team may have other issues on their hands. “The funny thing is, people lead by example,” Truitt acknowledges. “So, yes, I’m the leader of the task force, but Elliot is very much a leader, as well. And so the detectives under him are watching him and they’re watching the way he does things, and how he goes rogue and he does what he wants, even when he’s told not to do it. And so we’re gonna start seeing some of that played out with the other detectives.”

“I have to get on him that he needs to keep these other detectives in line, because I can’t keep everybody in line,” she continues. “I think that’s what we’ll start to see—you definitely see Bell and Stabler’s bond as partners come together even more. But, you know, we have to keep these other detectives in line now, so we’ll see how it goes.”

As for their outside foes, with Robert Silas (John Doman) now locked up and seemingly willing to play ball with the authorities, “we definitely are veering away from the casino storyline,” Truitt previews. “I don’t think it’s going to be much of a storyline in the future. We’re gonna be moving on to some other bad guys.”

“But the cool thing about the writers is that you still may see a couple of people from that casino storyline, but just used in a different way to assist the task force,” she continues. “But the actual casino storyline is not going to be a primary focus.”

When the show returns in 2023, “the next bad guys that you guys will see, they directly involve Bell’s character,” Truitt teases. “So that’s going to be really fun. We’re shooting that…I think three episodes [are] going to revolve around these bad guys. We’re shooting that now. So I’m really excited about what you guys are going to learn about Bell’s history. But I think it’s gonna be more of a three-episode arc [format] moving forward. I don’t know [what other] future bad guys are gonna be, so I’m just as excited as you guys to see it.”

LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME, Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC

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