‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 18 spoilers: ‘Veep’s’ Gary Cole to appear in Donald Trump-‘inspired’ episode

“Law & Order: SVU” often takes inspiration from the headlines for its episodes, so it really only felt like a matter of time before they decided to a story that took on one of the biggest headlines of the year.

Per Variety, “Veep” star Gary Cole is set to appear in an upcoming episode airing on October 26 that could take some similarities to recent scandals involving Presidential candidate Donald Trump. The specifics of these said scandals on the show remains to be seen, but Cole will play a politician running for an important office when damaging allegations start to come out. Peter Gallagher is also poised to return in this episode as Deputy Chief William Dodds, whose son was killed during the season 17 finale.

The timing for this episode is interesting in its own right, given that it will air mere weeks before the Presidential election, and before that time it is possible that even more scandals could come Trump’s way. There have been calls for “The Apprentice” executive producer Mark Burnett to release tapes of unaired footage from the show, but he has declined, saying through his company that they do not have the legal authorization to do so.

The final thing that makes this episode interesting is that per the aforementioned publication, there was additional scrutiny put on this episode by the crew and producers of the show due to the subject matter, and how similar they were staying to real-life debates. There were also several changes along the way in terms of when it would air on the schedule due to how the episode could potentially be perceived in the middle of election season.

(Photo: NBC.)