| "Producer's Backend" | ||
|---|---|---|
| ← | SVU, Episode 16.03 | → |
| Production number: 16003 First aired (US): 8 October 2014 First aired (UK): 2 November 2014 First aired (CAN): 8 October 2014 First aired (AUS): 23 February 2015 | ||
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| Teleplay By Jill Abbinanti & Brianna Yellen Story By Julie Martin & Warren Leight Directed By Michael Pressman | ||
The arrest of a troubled actress leads to an investigation of those caring for her.
Summary[]
Amaro reports to the scene of a car crash where Hollywood starlet Tensley Evans tries to flirt her way out of an arrest. Amaro's by-the-book handling of the situation gets him back on the SVU squad, just in time to investigate Tensley's latest offense - the statutory rape of a 15 year-old boy. But Benson suspects that underlying issues may have led to Tensley's downward spiral - is the victimizer also a victim?
Plot[]
Two women are shown yelling at each other after a car crash. Amaro arrives at the scene where it is revealed that one of the women is former child star Tensley Evans.
Before Amaro can arrest her, Tensley is able to get back in her car and drive away, but Amaro is able to catch & arrest her. As she is being handcuffed, Tensley offers Amaro sexual favors.
During Tensley's arraignment, she claims that Amaro was being sexually inappropriate with her, but dash cam footage shows that Amaro handled Tensley's arrest by the book. After Olivia shows Lt. Tucker the dash cam footage, Amaro is allowed to return to SVU.
It is revealed that Tensley left her court-ordered rehab, but she claims that the psych director at the rehab center, Dr. Jim Durant, sexually assaulted her. When the detectives talk to him, he denies acting inappropriately with Tensley and that she seduced him during one of their sessions.
Dr. Durant reveals that Tensley was caught on security cameras performing oral sex on her roommate's 15-year-old son, Gregory. He told the boy's mother, but she didn't want to pursue the case any further.
When Rollins and Amaro talk to Gregory, he says that it was the best thing that ever happened to him, but Gregory's dad wants to press charges against her. Tensley says that what she did with Gregory was normal, but Olivia arrests her for statutory rape.
Tensley's psychological evaluation reveals that she is capable to stand trial, but Dr. Emily Sopher tells Olivia that she suggests that Tensley was possibly abused when she was young which could explain her behavior.
When Olivia and Rollins talk to Tensley, her mom and her lawyer about what happened to Tensley when she was young. Tensley explains that when she was 13 or 14 years old, she used to attend pool parties thrown by a big time movie producer named Adam Brubeck.
Tensley says that Adam would give her parts in his films if she had sex with him & his friends and doesn't think that she's a victim. But since she is 24 years old, the statute of limitations has expired and Barba can't prosecute Adam for abusing Tensley, but Tensley will be indicted with statutory rape.
Amaro, Carisi and Rollins go to Adam Brubeck's pool party to talk to him. Adam says that he never abused Tensley and calls her a "waste case." As the SVU squad looks Adam's other teen stars, they discover they either ended up in porn, in rehab or using drugs. They also learn that a 15-year-old girl named Amber Forbes drowned at one of Adam's parties, but her death was ruled accidental despite the fact that she had alcohol & ecstasy in her system.
Carisi and Amaro talk to former teen star Brody Clark who says that he & Tensley were at the party when Amber drowned, but claims he doesn't know what happened because he was inside when the incident occured.
After Rollins and Olivia talk to Tensley about Amber's death, Tensley refuses to talk about it and Olivia discovers her in the bathroom, attempting suicide by slitting her wrists.
Later on, Tensley reveals to Olivia about what happened to Amber: she, Amber and Adam were high on drugs and Adam told the girls take turns on him while he held their heads underwater. Tensley went first, but she started choking and went inside. She tried getting Amber to go with her, but Adam refused to let her. Tensley feels responsible for what happened to Amber.
When Amaro and Carisi speak to Brody again, Brody says that he had to keep Adam's secret of what happened to Amber because Adam knew that Brody was gay and with a guy the night of the party. It is revealed that Adam's lawyer Dennis George threatened to destroy him if Brody said anything.
Dennis agrees to cooperate and gives the detectives flash drives of Adam with young girls. It appears that Adam was quite clever with the videos because all of his films were shot in the states with an age of consent of 16 years old, but the detectives find out that Adam slipped up once.
Barba sees a disc called "Winnipeg Nights", which was a movie that was supposed to be shot in Canada, but was never made. Only one girl named Maude Peterson was asked to audition. When the detectives head up to Canada to speak with her, Maude states that she met Adam on Vine and came to Winnipeg, spending the weekend in his hotel room, saying that he was going to make her into a star, but he never did.
When questioned, Adam says that because the age of consent is 16 years old in Canada, he can't be charged, but Barba & Olivia are able to prove that there was never any intention to make the "Winnipeg Nights" movie and that Adam only traveled to Canada with the purpose to have sex with an underage girl which is a federal crime. Adam ends up being taken away by the Feds.
Tensley is later shown being interviewed by Hoda Kotb where Tensley talks about her new guest arc on "Orange is The New Black" after serving six months of community service for statutory rape.
The episode ends with Olivia getting a phone call and rushing out of the precinct, saying that Noah is in the hospital.
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Mariska Hargitay as Sergeant Olivia Benson
- Danny Pino as Detective Nick Amaro
- Kelli Giddish as Detective Amanda Rollins
- Ice-T as Detective Odafin Tutuola (credit only)
- Raúl Esparza as A.D.A. Rafael Barba
Recurring Cast[]
- Peter Scanavino as Detective Dominick Carisi, Jr.
- Robert John Burke as I.A.B. Lieutenant Ed Tucker
- Aida Turturro as Judge Felicia Catano
- Tabitha Holbert as A.D.A. Rose Callier
- Bronwyn Reed as Lucy Huston
- Ron Rifkin as Attorney Marvin Exley
- Linda Emond as Dr. Emily Sopher
- Josh Saviano as Attorney Don Taft
Guest Cast[]
- Stevie Lynn Jones as Tensley Evans
- Dana Wheeler-Nicholson as Donna Evans
- Dennis Boutsikaris as Dr. Jim Durant
- Gary Milner as Dennis George
- Drigan Lee as Brody Clark
- Brian d'Arcy James as Adam Brubeck
- Hoda Kotb as Herself
- Kaitlyn Bausch as Maude Peterson
- John Marballi as Officer Tommy Ryan
- Mark Boyett as Tom Miller
- Tommy Nelson as Gregory Miller
- Jazmyn Richardson as Janae
References[]
- Orange Is the New Black
- Amber Forbes (victim)
- Bella Macy (victim)
- Jordana Russo (victim)
- Internal Affairs Bureau
- Junior Prom
- California
- Montana
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Thailand
- Summer Days
- Washington
- Winnipeg, Canada
Quotes[]
- Amaro: What's your name, miss?
- Tensley Evans: Really? Do you live under a rock? Okay, Tensley Evans. Former teen movie star, current favorite celebrity hot mess.
- Benson: [to Rollins after hanging up the phone] That was Barba. In light of Tensley's latest accusation, the judge just ordered her released into her mother's custody.
- Rollins: Really? So, she runs away from the scene of an accident, she makes a false accusation against Nick and She just gets sent back to her multi-million dollar penthouse?
- Benson: Until we follow up on the allegations made against the psych director, yes.
- Rollins: Jim Durant? He's well-respected. There's no record there. No whispers. She lied about Nick, she's lying about this guy. Yeah, she's just gonna accuse anybody of anything just to get out of here!
- Benson: Amanda, it sounds like you're taking this a little personally.
- Benson: By the way, keep showing Carisi the ropes. It's really helping.
- Rollins: That's like my mother telling me I'm really the only that can mop floors, cause she didn't want to do it.
- Benson: Okay, that may be, but the law says that that boy was too young to consent to sexual activity with an adult.
- Donna Evans: Well, that can't be true, especially for a boy!
- Tensley Evans: [as she's being arrested for statutory rape] I know my rights, okay? They've been read to me a dozen times in the past two years. #IPlayedARookieCop.
- Judge Felicia Catano: Mr. Exley, your client is back in my courtroom again, facing a serious charge. Should we install a revolving door?
- Barba: This girl has had enough second chances.
- Tensley Evans: I don't know what you want me to say.
- Marvin Exley: Listen to me, Tensley. The detectives are suggesting that something happened to you when you were a young teenager. Is that true?
- Tensley Evans: I wasn't raped, okay, if that's what you're saying. I'm no victim. It's part of the business, I did what I had to do.
- Benson: Fair enough. So what was that?
- Tensley Evans: It's no big deal. The first time, it was at a producer's pool party. Mom said it would be good for my career if I went.
- Benson: Whose party?
- Tensley Evans: Adam Brubeck.
- Rollins: And who is he?
- Tensley Evans: Hello? He's like an a-list movie producer. This was one of his casting parties at his place in East Hampton. I was in the hot tub, I got too drunk, woozy. He took me into his bedroom, toweled me off, said I had a beautiful body and that if I made him happy, he'd find a role for me in his next movie. So I did. Next time, he brought in two more guys, first to watch, but then they said fair is fair, so I did them, too.
- Rollins: How old were you?
- Tensley Evans: It went on for a couple of years.
- Rollins: And you're... you're 24 now, right? Not 23? [Tensley nods her head yes]
- Benson: So Tensley, how often did this happen?
- Tensley Evans: I don't remember. I'd drink or they had coke, ecstasy. Blur the edges. Open your mouth, spread your legs, different guys. But it worked. I got that role and I got bigger roles. My mom was right.
- Rollins: Your mother knew you were having sex with your producer and his friends?
- Tensley Evans: I mean, we never talked about it, but she put me on the pill a couple months later. You don't see me complaining like that pansy-ass Gregory, okay? I gave Adam what he wanted and he gave me what I wanted. Oh-bla-di, oh-bla-da.
- Rollins: Were you sick the day that they went over statute of limitations at law school?
- Carisi: Yeah, yeah, she's 24 which in New York is one year too late to charge statutory rape. Anybody want to explain to me why that law still exists?
- Barba: You can thank the church lobbyists for that.
Background information and notes[]
- Marvin Exley is shown to still be working as a defense attorney, despite his involvement with Delia Wilson's operation.
- This is the first time Dana Wheeler-Nicholson has portrayed the immature mother of a female celebrity on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Wheeler-Nicholson went on to portray Lilah Jones, the mother of Kelsey Jones in the twenty-fourth season episode Mirror Effect.
- Actor Josh Saviano appears in this episode as an attorney. This marks his first acting appearance since 1993 when he left acting to pursue a career as an attorney.
- Amaro is working traffic duty in Queens. Yet the opening scene has him making a traffic stop in Manhattan. The George Washington Bridge is visible in the background.
Episode scene cards[]
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Arraignment Court |
Internal Affairs Bureau |
Strength, Hope & |
Residence of |
| 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|
|
Marsden Hotel Pool |
Set of |
Offices of |
| Previous episode: "American Disgrace" |
"Producer's Backend" Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 16 |
Next episode: "Holden's Manifesto" |