“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” is about to tackle the Harvey Weinstein scandal, because of course they are.
Dick Wolf’s crime procedural, known for using current headlines as inspiration for its disturbing tales, will be taking on the Weinstein drama, though they aren’t gonna do it in the most obvious of ways.
“We are hitting Harvey Weinstein head-on, but it’s not in the realm of the entertainment business,” executive producer Michael Chernuchin told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a real important episode about the rape culture in an industry, and we wanted to try stretch the law to criminalize that sort of environment.”
“SVU” will be moving the location of their tale from the entertainment industry to the skies.
“We were actually working on a story about airline pilots and what a boys club that is,” Chernuchin said of the episode, which the “SVU” writers were penning as the Weinstein news broke. “We were beating the story out and said, ‘Wow, this is exactly what the actresses go through in Hollywood. It’s the same environment.’ So we got all of our Harvey stuff out with airline pilots.”
The episode is set to air in 2018, giving you plenty of time to catch up on the real-life Weinstein accusations — if you’ve been living in a hole for the past couple months, that is.
Back in October, the New York Times exposed decades-worth of sexual harassment and assault accusations posed against the former head of The Weinstein Company. Since Weinstein went down, accusers have spoken out against many other Hollywood big-wigs, including James Toback, Kevin Spacey and Brett Ratner.
A rep from NBC noted to EW that the series is, indeed, fiction.
“Law & Order: SVU” airs Wednesdays on NBC at 9 p.m. ET.