Law & Order fans were in for a treat when Law & Order: Organized Crime was announced last year, reuniting fans with the beloved Elliott Stabler (Christopher Meloni), who left Law & Order: Special Victims Unit years ago.
Playing opposite Meloni is the talented Danielle Moné Truitt as Sergeant Ayanna Bell. The series follows these detectives in the “Organized Crime Control Bureau as they work to dismantle New York City’s most vicious and violent illegal enterprises.”
Law & Order: Organized Crime is currently in its second season. Truitt sat down with theGrio, opening up about joining the Law & Order family, what she loves most about her character and her journey in Hollywood.
To no one’s surprise, the show has been a hit for NBC, premiering to 7.56 million viewers. When speaking of this opportunity and joining the Law & Order universe, Truitt called the experience “a blessing.”
“It really feels like such a huge blessing in my life, it’s definitely not something I saw coming,” she explained. The journey of an actress “has no formula,” she shared, which makes this gig a particularly special one for her.
“There’s no book you can read, there’s no map to get to a certain place…you just gotta have a lot of faith,” she said. “It’s been a lot of closed doors on my journey, but the right doors opened and I’m happy this was one of them.”
Truitt’s role is also an historic one, as she is one of the first Black main leads on a Law & Order show, a series that began in 1990. “I think that’s a big deal and it’s something that I feel very grateful to be,” she shared. “It just feels good to be apart of something, you know, where you see a lot of different people of color and sexual orientations being represented.”
Considering the scope and history of the Law & Order franchise, it took Truitt quite a while to truly settle into the fact that she’s in a leading role. “It took until probably the first day of the second season for me to actually accept the fact that I was on Law & Order!” she said.
It helps that Truitt truly loves her character, Sergeant Ayanna Bell, and all she’s been able to bring to the table of such a beloved franchise.
“There’s so much more to her than just being a sergeant, you know? She’s a sergeant but she’s also a sister to who needs a sister, she’s a mama to who needs a mama!” she said.
She quipped that she’s even “a mama to Stabler” when he needs it.
Next year, Truitt will also return to the theater, where she got her career start. Her one-woman show, 3 Black Girl Blues, which she wrote with Anthony D’Juan, is described in a press release “an exciting play of a tale of three close friends – Keish, Jill and Stephanie – who grew up together and now at thirty years old are confronted with facing their demons.”
Truitt will star in a production of the play next summer at B Street Theatre in Sacramento, Ca.
“3 Black Girl Blues is a play where you get to see the lives of three different Black women in three different socioeconomic classes and places in their lives, and how they deal with mental illness and things like that,” she explained. “I know it sounds heavy and deep, but it’s actually really funny as well!”
For more on 3 Black Girl Blues, head to the B Street Theatre site.
Law & Order: Organized Crime airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. EST on NBC.
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