‘Law & Order: Organized Crime’: Sgt. Bell Is ‘Taking Back Her Own Power’ in Season 3, Danielle Moné Truitt Teases (Exclusive)

During the first two seasons of Law & Order: Organized Crime, Det. Elliot Stabler was the one with a rocky life at home. In Season 3 though, Sgt. Ayanna Bell has to pick up the pieces from the shocking Season 2 cliffhanger. During an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Danielle Moné Truitt said her character will spend part of the new season trying to take back the power in her own life after her wife Denise (Keren Dukes) took their son and moved out of their apartment.

Bell will face the “disappointment” of the divorce in the new season while “taking back her own power” in her life, Truitt said. Audiences will see her dealing with a home life that is now in shambles. She now has no one to come home to and will learn that one of the reasons for the marriage’s dissolution is her dedication to police work.

However, instead of trying to fix her family life, Bell is going to put “110%” into the career she has built, Truitt said. That means working even harder to keep Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and the Organized Crime Task Force together. “I think Bell is a lot like me,” Truitt explained. “I can go through some crazy things in my life and I’m able to compartmentalize it a bit so that I can still be successful in what I need to be successful in, while still dealing with the trials and tribulations that I might be going through.”

The Organized Crime writers have also been “very cool” about taking inspiration from the actors’ real lives, Truitt noted. “They’re very interested in our personal lives and very interested in how we see our character developing and growing,” Truitt said. “When [Season 2 showrunner Bryan Golubuff] was with us, the last showrunner, we had a meeting, and then when [Sean Jablonski] came on board, [it was the] same thing. We talked and we really got to talk about the character and about my life. I think that’s the cool part to read the scripts and be like, ‘Oh, they use that.’”

Bell is also notable as the first LGBTQ+ character and Black woman to lead a Law & Order police team. The response Truitt has heard from fans has been overwhelmingly positive. There is a very small group of people who do not really like the character, “but we don’t pay attention to those people because they don’t know what’s up,” Truitt joked. Most fans were “so excited that they had a young Black woman [and an] LGBTQ [character] in charge,” she said. “I’m really excited for next week’s episode actually because Bell has a lot of great stuff in the upcoming episodes,” Truitt later teased.

Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 3 premiered on Sept. 22, as the first part of the three-part crossover with Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The main Season 3 storyline, which features an investigation into the first New York City casino, kicks in during the Sept. 29 episode at 10 p.m. ET on NBC. Rick Gonzalez and Brent Antonello have joined the cast as new detectives.