“I feel like her function as a leader is beyond just trying to protect everybody all the time, and mothering everybody all the time,” Truitt says now.
“To be very, very blunt,” she continues, “that is a trope that a lot of Black actresses end up falling into, like, the motherhood role, where you’re the caretaker of everybody.
“I don’t want that for Bell, and I don’t want that for me as an actor,” she adds.
Truitt says in Season Five she “tried to play a little bit more with Bell,” and that includes her “holding her team accountable and really trusting them to do their job.”
“This is a specialized task force. Nobody on this task force should be in a place where they don’t know what they’re doing,” she says. “Whether they’re (as) old as Stabler, or young as Jet, they’re pros at what they do — just like we’re pros at what we do on set as actors.”
Danielle Moné Truitt grades co-star Chris Meloni’s writing for Episode 2 of ‘Law & Order: Organized Crime’
They are so professional, in fact, that one of their own wrote the second episode of the new season: Meloni.
“He did very well,” Truitt says with a smile of Meloni’s writing abilities.
“We laughed, we teased him,” she continues. “We were like, ‘Oh my God, we can’t wait until he comes on to set.’ We’re doing his episode so that we can be like, ‘You know what, this line right here is just not working for me.’”
She also reflects on what a normal read-through looks like when Meloni gathers with the team to go over a script.
“He’s sitting there, he has his legs propped up on the table, he has his glasses on with the script,” Truitt explains. “And he’s like, ‘You know, I’m trying to understand …’ So we totally did that to him one day on set.”
While the cast “gave him s—,” Truitt says Meloni did “a great job.”
“We’re proud of him,” she says.
Some of the lines in Meloni’s episode may also contain profanity, now that the show will be on a streaming service and not on network television.
“It’s just more gritty,” Truitt says of the change. “We have more freedom with the storylines to talk about things that maybe were — we had to get more approval or permission to talk about.”
She says everyone is “very excited” for their characters to be able to curse now, something Truitt feels is “perfect” for the show.
As for whom Bell would want to curse at first, Truitt says, “Definitely Stabler. She loves him to death, but I could see her being like, ‘Shut the f— up.’”
“‘Organized Crime’ has a very different vibe than ‘SVU’ and then the original ‘Law & Order,’” Truitt says. “I think it always should’ve been in a more gritty world, and I think it’s hard to do that when you’re on network television and there’s all these rules.”
Bell’s bond with a Stabler brother — and the team member who gives her the toughest time in ‘OC’ Season 5
When asked if fans will see her character’s personal life this season, Truitt doesn’t sugarcoat the truth.
“I’m not going to lie to you guys,” she says. “No, you will not.”
In past seasons, Bell divorced her wife and struggled to balance her job with spending time with her young son, Jack, who is named after Truitt’s real-life son Jackson.
“I pray that in future seasons that we’ll get back to some of her personal life,” Truitt says.
For now, the main focus continues to be on Stabler and his family. Dean Norris, who plays Stabler’s older brother, Randall, is now a series regular for Season Five.
“It was great working with Dean,” Truitt says. “He’s a good person — nice guy.”
While she says she did not work with him a lot, when their characters do cross paths, it’s usually to keep Stabler “grounded and in line.”
“There’s a couple conversations where Bell’s like, ‘Yeah, I talked to your brother,’” Truitt explains of Bell and Stabler. “He’s like, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘My brother?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s my bestie.’”
But that doesn’t mean other detectives won’t be driving Bell crazy.
“Reyes has kind of leveled up a little bit in the area of irritation with Bell,” Truitt says.
Reyes is a newer member of the team, but now that he’s established himself and become comfortable, Truitt explains, he acts more like his true self.
“Although they have a really tight relationship, Bell and Reyes get along very well. He’s kind of asserting himself in ways that he hadn’t in the past,” she says.
Stabler is again undercover in the new season, and Truitt feels Reyes thought he needed to “step up in a certain way” with his fellow detective out of the office.
She says there are times Bell has to “check” Reyes and “put him back in his place.”
Truitt also says that while everyone makes mistakes, Bell will be the one to “lead them in the direction that she feels they should go.”
Season Five of “Law & Order: Organized Crime” premieres Thursday, April 17, on Peacock, with a special airing of the first episode on NBC at 10 p.m. ET.
(Peacock is part of our parent company, NBCUniversal.)
