Jalen Brunson spends his nights running the Knicks’ offense at Madison Square Garden. On Thursday night he was across town in a pizzeria, wearing a detective’s badge, and his one minute on “Law & Order: SVU” broke the episode’s case open.
The episode, “Forsaken,” aired Thursday at 9 PM on NBC. Brunson plays Detective Jay Madison, and about 20 minutes in he sits down with Captain Olivia Benson, Mariska Hargitay’s character, to compare notes on a case she is working. His father Rick Brunson, a Knicks assistant coach, walks into the restaurant in the same scene, right before Benson arrives.
Madison is a small part, but the scene is the turn. He tells Benson about a traffic stop he worked: a driver who blew a .25, a kid in the car, and a search that turned up a pocket knife and a metal bar on a keychain. That metal bar matched what the victim described, and it pointed Benson at the suspect and got her the warrant that led to an arrest.
Hargitay is not a random co-star for him, either. She is a regular on Celebrity Row at the Garden and rode on the team’s championship float during the parade. Brunson hosted “Saturday Night Live” earlier this year, but this was his first real drama role, and he kept the review simple:
“Fun. Really fun. A lot of fun.”
Jalen Brunson, on filming SVU
Point guard by night, detective for one episode. New York gets its captain on the floor and on the case in the same week.