Law & Order SVU Hargitay, Melon, Ice-T
Credit: WireImage

Backstage battle… or a tabloid trash-talking?

When you want gossip, you go to theThe National Enquirer. When you want the truth… well, then you go straight to the folks at the heart of the gossip. And if you’re very, very lucky, fact will, as they say, be stranger (or at least more interesting) than the fiction.

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So what’s really going on behind the scenes of the long-running Law & Order franchise? Depends on who you believer. According to SVU star Ice-T (Detective “Fin” Tutuola, he was warned via E-mail that the National Inquirer would be running a story detailing his displeasure with the return of Christopher Meloni (Detective Elliot Stabler) to the L&O fold via his role on Law & Order: Organized Crime.

Law & Order SVU stabler fin meloni Ice-T

Claiming the two have been “feuding”, and that Ice-T was “envious of the attention Mr. Meloni has received since coming back”, the letter from the  Enquirer (which you can read below) offered him the option to comment on the article. And comment he did, as only Ice-T could, taking to Twitter to say, “Clownass MFs trying to make up Drama outta thin air… WOW… MFs are really on that BS.”

Referring to Meloni as “my guy”, he sent his fellow actor the E-mail, causing Stabler’s alter ego to retort sarcastically, “(Ice-T) was kind enough to let me know we were feuding.”

And if there was any doubt about how much the two co-stars like each other, Meloni put thoughts of discord between them to rest. When a fan tweeted Meloni how thankful they were that the feud was fictional, adding that if they “had to choose between you two, it would probably be Ice,” the Organized Crime cop replied, “Same.”

All of this faux drama comes on the heels of the exit of Kelli Giddish (Detective Amanda Rollins) from SVU during the mid-season finale. In an exit interview with our sister-site Variety, the actress admitted it had not been her decision to leave, but added that she had worked with the show to craft Rollins’ exit. “We worked on this storyline together,” she explained, “and I think the last episode culminated the beautiful Rollins and Benson relationship, and we got to see Carisi and Rollins get married, which was such a treat.”

More: Giddish takes time to ‘address the chatter’

It was also, she added, pretty much a necessity. “I was like, ‘Thank God, because the fans are going to freak out if they don’t get it. Let’s give it to them!”

Of course, soap fans will recall that before picking up her detective’s badge, Giddish played the oft-controversial Di Henry on All My Children. 

While this particular scandal appears to have been completely made up, check out the gallery below for a few which, sadly, were all too real.