Law & Order: Organized Crime Loses Showrunner

Ilene Chaiken is exiting NBC’s Law & Order: Organized Crime after 14 months as the series’ executive producer. Chaiken will be replaced by Barry O’Brien on the series, which is still in production on its second season. According to Deadline, O’Brien joined the series as co-executive producer in November. The change in showrunner will reportedly not impact production on the series which still has five episodes left to film for the season. Chaiken herself was the second showrunner for the series, replacing Matt Olmstead in December 2022.

“Ilene did a terrific job launching the series and is a gifted writer,” executive producer Dick Wolf said. “She leaves the show in good hands and we are incredibly grateful for her contributions.”

Law & Order: Organized Crime is the latest entry in the overall Law & Order franchise. The series premiered April 1, 2021, and saw the return of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler. The series, which returned this week after a brief break due to the 2022 Beijing Olympics, recently announced that The Book of Boba Fett star Jennifer Beals would be joining the cast in a recurring role as the wife of the series’ latest antagonist, leader of the Marcy organization Preston Webb (Mykelti Williamson). It was also announced that Denis Leary would be joining the cast in a recurring role as well.

The series also recently added Robin Lord Taylor as a famous hacktivist, Sebastian McClane. Taylor has already appeared in several episodes of the series. We recently spoke to Taylor all about his new role on the show, and he broke down exactly who Sebastian McClane is and his history.

“Yeah, very much so. He was honorably discharged from the military and went into data systems, and then through some personal family tragedy, he ended up finding himself becoming essentially a hacktivist,” Taylor said. And then he would hack large banks, large financial institutions, and then redistribute the money to random people out there in the world who needed it. So yeah, he became sort of this legendary kind of Robin Hood figure in the internet, in the dark web.”

“Essentially, he’s a tragic character. He is a good, good person, and because of the hardships that he’s gone through, he has not succeeded,” Taylor said. “He is in a really bad place. It just takes a psychotic villain, like Richard Wheatley played by the incomparable Dylan McDermott, to get him out of jail and back in the world.”

Law & Order: Organized Crime airs every Thursday on NBC at 10 PM EST/9 PM CST.