LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT Post-Mortem: Donna Lynne Champlin Breaks Down Her Most Difficult (and Fun) Scenes in ‘The Grid Plan’

February 27, 2025 by Marisa Roffman

Law and Order SVU The Grid Plan spoilers

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT — “The Grid Plan” Episode 26014 — Pictured: Donna Lynne Champlin as Megan — (Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC)

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Thursday, February 27 episode of LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT.]

When Megan’s (Donna Lynne Champlin) reaction in the aftermath of her sexual assault didn’t align with the stereotypical response survivors can have, the defense tried to use it against her on the Thursday, February 27 episode of LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT.

After learning Megan had recently been diagnosed with MS and had been in town for a bucket list trip to see shows, the defense argued she hadn’t been raped; she had simply come from out of town and was looking for new experiences. And the team pointed to her abnormal behavior—not calling 911, being aggressive when she confronted her rapist before his arrest—as “proof” of their claim.

Since Megan’s disassociation was so central to the storyline, Champlin realized the early scene in “The Grid Plan” when Megan was in the ambulance, immediately after the attack, talking to Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) was an important key to her performance.

“I think the hardest scene, if I had to pick—and it sounds so incidental, but it was really important to me—[was] where Megan’s being put into an ambulance,” Champlin tells Give Me My Remote. “She’s been assaulted. She’s been wandering around for 10 minutes. Somebody else calls 911 for her. So clearly she’s disassociating. She’s in shock. She’s not in her body, you know? And it was only a very short scene; I think I had three lines, but the basis of the defense is that she’s not reacting like a normal assault victim. The next scene that you see her, she’s in the hospital, and she’s just had a rape kit, and she’s had some time. Things are starting to roll through. And so it was really important to me that in the ambulance, that’s the only time you see her in shock.”

“On the stand, that’s all I kept saying was, ‘I was in shock. I was trying to process everything. I didn’t have any control over my non-reaction,’” she continues. “And that was the only time you saw it. And so I started the first take we did. I did very normally, like, I’m in a gurney, and [Olivia] is like, ‘How’re you doing?’ And I responded with, ‘I’m good. You know, I came to see some shows’ and, just really, tonally, creepily. And the director [Norberto Barba] was like, ‘That’s great, because that is so unexpected and weird.’”

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT — “The Grid Plan” Episode 26014 — Pictured: (l-r) Donna Lynne Champlin as Megan, Joe Lanza as Richard, Mariska Hargitay as Capt. Olivia Benson — (Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC)

In future takes, he had a specific request. “He was like, ‘Every time we do a take, I want you to add just a little layer of trauma,’” Champlin recalls. “And I said to him, ‘Absolutely, I will do whatever you want. But this scene is very important to me, and I think it’s, ironically, so short, but it’s the linchpin of everything that follows. This is what the defense is talking about, this moment right here. So if it’s not perfect or close to perfect, the whole rest of the episode falls apart.’ And he was like, ‘No, no, no. I know what you’re doing. I agree. We have that in the can. Just in case.’ But that was the trickiest scene—this two-minute scene in the back of the ambulance.”

Though Champlin got the role very fast, she had an extended amount of time to work on it given production was split due to the holiday hiatus. But with those two weeks off, Champlin made the conscious decision to leave the part at work.

“I purposely didn’t bring my script home,” she says. “I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t even really talk about it, because it was two weeks of a hiatus and I thought, ‘What I put in the can I feel good about. Everyone seems to be pleased. So I don’t want to think about it too much while I’m away.’”

Champlin compares it to a story that has always stuck with her as an artist: A teacher put her students’ artwork up and a parent (who was a painter) was shocked to hear the pieces were done by students. “He was like, ‘That’s crazy. I mean, this stuff is really great,’” she recalls. “He was like, ‘What’s your secret?’ She says, ‘I know when to take it away from them.’ And so I really felt like that; that if I took those two weeks to really think about it, and really [got in my head] I would ruin the painting. So I purposely kind of back burnered it, and I feel confident that was the right decision.”

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT — “The Grid Plan” Episode 26014 — Pictured: (l-r) Kevin Kane as Det. Terry Bruno, Mariska Hargitay as Capt. Olivia Benson, Donna Lynne Champlin as Megan, Juliana Aidén Martinez as Det. Kate Silva — (Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC)

The actress also relished playing the bursts of rage that Megan experienced in the hour. “She does a lot of wacky, wacky s— which was, again, so much fun,” Champlin says. “So that was really thrilling, too…I haul off and just hit this guy, which, again, I mean, I got to punch a guy! I got to get arrested! I got to do such cool stuff that I never get to do unless I’m in the theater. I never get to do the stuff on camera. And [Olivia] says to me, ‘Why did you do that?’ And I was like, ‘That was the best part.’”

“Something about that line, I feel like, for any woman who’s been assaulted, to see them literally get a chance to just haul off and punch the guy…I just imagine the collective [cheer] when Megan says that was the best part,” she continues. “Some of the lines that the writers’ room gave me were just chef’s kiss.”

Megan ultimately was able to get justice, but it came at a price: News of her assault reached the people she knew back home (with rumors spreading it was an affair versus an assault) and her MS was revealed on the stand…before she could tell her husband. “She’s just in an avalanche of, like, ‘What the hell?!’ [about] the whole thing,” Champlin admits. “So I feel like by the end of the episode, I feel like the husband has gotten on board, so she has that pedestal back.”

“I think my dream, my wish, for her is that they go home,” she continues. “Her husband is active in her new lifestyle with the disease. My sister-in-law had ALS, so I watched my brother be that husband [for his wife]. Those diseases, of course, are just horrible for everybody. But the caregiver, often the spouse or the parent, gets forgotten a little bit. And it’s just so traumatizing for them. So my hope is that it’s a slow, progressing form of the disease, and that she has a lot of years left. That’s my wish for her: That she finishes that bucket list with her husband.”

Champlin acknowledges she would love to return somehow, but also notes she had so much fun here if this ends up being her only SVU appearance.

“We shot half of it before Christmas, and I got to see everybody’s weird Christmas sweaters,” she says with a laugh. “The day before the break for Christmas was the day we did the whole court scene—the big, huge [sequence] just all day. It was like an eight-page scene, and it was like 800 different angles. And it was a lot of lines for me, and all I just kept thinking was, ‘I will not be the guest star that makes people miss their Christmas flights home. I will not be that person.’ So, I mean, the night before I’m with my husband, I’m drilling, drilling, drilling, drilling, drilling, drilling. And he was like, ‘Don’t you have all day?’ And I was like, ‘Uh, uh, no, people have flights to catch. People have presents to buy. I am not going to be the reason we run one second late.’”

And, professionally, this is a big deal, too. “It’s exciting for me as an actor,” Champlin says.” I’m proud of my work that I’ve done on other things, but they haven’t been seen by a lot of people. Like, CRAZY EX[-GIRLFRIEND], our fans are devoted, but it’s a niche. And [film] FEEL THE BEAT is a niche. ANOTHER PERIOD is a niche. And it’s been really thrilling to be on [Netflix’s] THE PERFECT COUPLE, which was, I think, the first thing that I’ve been in that was just seen by [what] felt like everybody. It was the first time that I had random third grade teachers from elementary school calling me going, ‘I saw you on THE PERFECT COUPLE!’ I feel like SVU is kind of the same.”

“It’s just really exciting to get these gigs and these parts and to know that they’re just being seen by so many people,” she continues. “It’s exciting. And I just, honestly, would love more of that. And this part, too…in the theater, I do a wide range, but [‘The Grid Plan’] felt like I was doing a play. And it was so satisfying to go from zero to 100, emotionally, because I’m not asked to do that a lot on camera. CRAZY EX…we had four seasons [to have arcs], but not in one episode. And it’s thrilling. And I would just hope the future is filled with more wonderful parts and chances to work with amazing people like Mariska and the crew at SVU. That would be awesome.”

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC

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LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT Post-Mortem: Donna Lynne Champlin Breaks Down Her Most Difficult (and Fun) Scenes in ‘The Grid Plan’

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