Law & Order: SVU has entered a new era in the fall 2025 TV schedule, with the arrival of the show’s first female showrunner as well as the Season 27 return of fan-favorite Kelli Giddish as Amanda Rollins. In the new episode on October 23, the Special Victims Unit will catch a case that’s much more complicated than it initially seems, even by SVU standards. Former Poker Face cast member Danielle Macdonald will appear in the installment, and she spoke with CinemaBlend about her status as a longtime fan as well as what appealed to her about her character.
The new episode on October 23 is called “Feed the Craving,” which Macdonald teased means “not being able to help yourself” in “relation to this story.” The case will pick up when a woman in active labor is kidnapped, with the newly-returned Rollins joining forces with Curry to chase down clues via the woman’s doula. It will eventually be on Carisi to try and get a confession to close the case, with Benson in the mix as always despite Chief Tynan’s efforts to promote her to a desk job.
For Danielle Macdonald, who plays a character by the name of Natalie in “Feed the Craving,” this episode will be her first appearance in the Law & Order franchise, and she shared that she is among the many who grew up as fans of SVU. She shared:
I grew up watching this show with my family. In Australia, I think procedural crime shows were really, really popular, especially when I was growing up. So we would always watch them. There was a handful of them that we watched, and SVU was one of them. So when this opportunity came up, I was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s like a teenage dream,’ to be honest. My parents are really excited as well, because it’s something that I think as a teenager, when you’re watching that kind of thing, it’s like I dreamed of getting to do a guest there on this, so it was really cool to be able to go into that world. It was like fulfilling a bucket list item from a teenage dream.
When a show has been around for nearly thirty years, airing in syndication for well over a decade, and available now via streaming services like a Peacock subscription and a Hulu subscription, is it any wonder that there are many SVU fans who came to love the show as youngsters despite the very dark storylines? Danielle Macdonald was understandably excited to join a series that she’d been watching since she was a teen in Australia, and shared her take on why SVU is so popular:
It is such a strange thing that it is so popular and such a comfort for people when it’s really dark subject matter, but also maybe that’s the way that we need to see it. The way that they structure it is really smart. It gets you in the world of it without sucker punching you and keeping you down for days. I don’t know. I always found that. I thought they always had a good balance.
The structure has certainly been working to keep Law & Order: SVU on the air for 27 seasons so far, and is even a little less structured than the format of the original Law & Order. Of course, it. doesn’t hurt SVU that Mariska Hargitay has been the star from the very beginning, with Macdonald saying that it was “a little surreal at first” to join forces with the Emmy-winner.
While fans will have to tune in to see how Natalie fits into the storyline of the woman who’s abducted while in active labor, Danielle Macdonald acknowledged that guest stars can have pretty grim parts to play in a story, and previewed her character:
I would say that there’s a lot more going on with my character than meets the eye at first. She is complex, and she was a fascinating role for me to try and figure out, to be honest.
Natalie will be a key character in the first episode with Rollins back in Special Victims full-time, so it should be interesting to see how the case unfolds for the civilians involved as well as how the investigators work together for one of the first times. Macdonald went on to share what about Natalie appealed to her when she read the script for the “Feed the Craving” episode:
[The] interesting thing about SVU is obviously I think a lot of women relate to the show, for obvious reasons. And I think that it was really interesting seeing a different kind of story than often we hear of in relation to Special Victims. And I thought that was actually really fascinating to kind of understand the level of depth that sexual abuse can kind of relate to. That was really fascinating for me.
The promo for “Feed the Craving” sheds a bit more light, revealing that Benson will discover there are a lot more victims than she expected. Take a look:
Watch On
See Danielle Macdonald’s episode of Law & Order: SVU on Thursday, October 23 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC, between the newest installment of Law & Order‘s milestone Season 25 and the edited-for-broadcast fifth season of Law & Order: Organized Crime. You can also find all three shows streaming on Peacock.