Stephanie: I'm really excited to see what happens when Mariska steps behind the camera on Law & Order: SVU. Any deets you can spare?

Sure are! It's not an open and shut case for the SVU squad, executive producer Warren Leight tells us. Alec Baldwin plays Jimmy "Mac" McArthur, a New York City newspaper columnist who's "like the last of a dying breed." He's larger than life and so is Alec Baldwin, Leight says.

"There's rape in Central Park South that also seems to be hate crime. The victim is an Indian Islamic woman and Jimmy Mac comes in and leaks certain bits of information and announces it's a hoax, there was no hate crime and this is another Tawana Brawley. Our squad is in the midst of trying to find out what happens to this poor woman played by Summer Bishil…the question for the squad and Jimmy Mac is, "Was there a crime or is she making the whole thing up?" and Jimmy Mac decides it's a hoax and announces it on page one of [fictional] The New York Ledger and that just throws a hand grenade into the case," Leight spills. And getting Baldwin to play a media figure after his story about leaving the public eye was just by chance.

"I wish I could say we planned that. There have been a lot of attempts over the years to get him. Mariska and Alec are great friends and I guess there had been talk off and on over the years about could he ever do an episode and when this idea came up, I thought this is the one," Leight says. "He's awfully believable as a hard-hitting Irish columnist. We called him about it and I got about 20 words into the character description and he goes, ‘I optioned a book about a couple of these guys once. I wanted to play [real-life columnist] Mike McAlary in a movie…' We had what we thought was the right part for him and it turns out he had wanted to play a New York City columnist for two decades."