Law & Order: SVU is pulling from the headlines at Fox News for an upcoming episode.
The long-running procedural is developing an episode inspired by ousted CEO Roger Ailes and the scandal that led to his exit from the channel last year, sources confirm to THR.
The episode is centered on the powerful head of a news network, Howard Coyle, who has a past; a female anchor at the network who is carrying a dark secret; and a young up-and-coming anchor willing to do anything to get ahead.
NBC declined to comment. TVLine was the first to report the episode.
Longtime Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson famously sued Ailes and Fox News last year, claiming that she was fired after rejecting sexual advances from Ailes. As allegations from other females at the cable news network surfaced, Ailes eventually stepped down from his post, while Carlson settled out of court.
Multiple Ailes-inspired projects have popped up since, most notably a limited series from Blumhouse Productions, Tom McCarthy and Gabriel Sherman, one of the key journalists reporting on the Ailes scandal, as well as a scripted film from the writers behind The Big Short. Earlier this week, THR broke that a doc about Ailes is in the works from Going Clear filmmaker Alex Gibney.
This is just the latest SVU episode to pull from the headlines this season. The second episode of season 18 was loosely inspired by Making a Murderer, and the NBC drama has a Donald Trump-inspired episode in the can that has been delayed since late October. Earlier this month, executive producer Dick Wolf sounded optimistic that the episode, which stars Gary Cole as the now-president, would air in the spring, “But I don’t know,” he said.
Law & Order: SVU celebrates its 400th episode next month.
