Mr Viral
When Wendy Battles first heard that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson had been killed in broad daylight on a New York street, her thoughts quickly turned to television. “Twenty-two years later, our episode is happening in real life,” she texted Noah Baylin, with whom she’d written a 2002 episode of Law & Order titled “Undercovered.”
The story begins when Warren Slater (Joseph Culliton), an executive at the fictional insurance company Fairhaven Group, is found dead on the streets of Manhattan. Detectives Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin) are eventually led to Tony Garcia (Juan Carlos Hernández), father of a nine-year-old named Courtney (Courtnie Beceiro), who has leukemia. His daughter was given two options for lifesaving treatment: a bone marrow transplant that was unlikely to yield a match in time, or an experimental drug called Gleevec, which would cost $2,500 a month in perpetuity. After Slater cast the deciding vote on a panel that denied Courtney the costly treatment, Tony Garcia killed him in cold blood.
More than two decades later, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged in the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in what investigators said was likely a targeted attack. In what appears to be a manifesto found on Mangione, the alleged killer condemns companies that “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.” UnitedHealthcare reportedly rejects more medical claims than other major American insurers, and Thompson’s assailant allegedly left behind shell casings marked with the words “delay” and “deny,” which echo terms the industry uses to reject paying for medical procedures.
At the end of the Law & Order episode, assistant district attorney Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) prosecutes the case. But after Garcia’s emotional testimony, the jury is deadlocked, and district attorney Nora Lewin (Dianne Wiest) nixes plans for a retrial, expressing doubt that any jury would unanimously convict him.
Thompson’s real-life killing has similarly exposed the disillusionment and utter rage Americans feel about our broken health care system, as well our collective impulse to make light of, if not outright celebrate, Mangione’s alleged action. “It really struck a nerve,” says Battles, who has devoted much of her career as a writer-producer in network TV procedurals to probing hot-button issues—including another notable episode of Law & Order that aired before the legalization of gay marriage, in which Waterston’s Jack McCoy declares, “Let ’em marry. Why shouldn’t they be as miserable as the rest of us?”
“These shows are not just about solving a crime or entertaining people,” says Battles. “It’s about exploring human nature, motives, and trying to provoke discussion and feelings in the viewers.”
After rewatching her eerily resonant installment of Law & Order for the first time in years (the episode is currently only available through DVD), Battles speaks to Vanity Fair about her own personal connection to the storyline, and why this crime will likely inspire an upcoming episode of Law & Order.
Vanity Fair: When you first heard about the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, did this Law & Order episode you wrote spring to mind?
Wendy Battles: Absolutely. In fact, Noah and I exchanged texts. We just both recognized right away that there were parallels. When the murder first occurred, it looked like it could have something to do with the fact that the victim was involved in the insurance agency—but it could also be a professional hit, a disgruntled employee. But it wasn’t a very well-organized crime. He left DNA and fingerprints. And that does not speak to a professional hit man.
Law & Order is known for its ripped-from-the-headlines episodes. Did a real-life event serve as inspiration for this one?
Yes, it was in my personal life. When I was in high school, my father, who was 40 years old at the time, had six children and owned his own business, came down with type 1 diabetes. After that diagnosis, he was denied insurance, needed a lot of treatment, and had to go to Boston, to the Joslin Clinic, all on his own dime.
I think later he got an insurer, but it was at a really exorbitant rate. And this is a man who had paid all his premiums his whole life. So that stuck with me. Fortunately he was able to afford it, but there were tens of millions of people out there in the same situation who couldn’t.
How did it feel to mine that personal experience for the series?
A lot of the issues that were raised in the episode trace back to watching my father go through that. But in the episode, they brought it to trial, and the result was a hopelessly deadlocked jury. The district attorney said, “I doubt we’ll ever find a jury who will unanimously vote to convict this man.” And so he was set free.
I feel like that jury represents what’s happening now. The outrage and the anger that people were feeling about health insurance in this country was around, alive and kicking even back then, 22 years ago. You can see on social media the outrage, [and] people laughing and clapping. It’s just unbelievable. So it’s obviously a very, very polarizing issue that I would really hope some day that we can deal with. I mean, no other industrialized country has this problem. I lived and worked in Denmark for four years; I saw what socialized medicine can do, and none of my friends there have ever worried about a medical condition. So I know it can be done another way, a better way.
What have you made of the public reaction to Luigi Mangione? He almost feels like he could be a TV character.
Then I also read that he had back surgery and was in pain too. Obviously a lot of people are in pain, but I don’t condone violence, and shooting this man in cold blood is not the answer. The answer is changing your vote—voting people into office who will put nationalized health care into practice. I mean, we almost had it with Obamacare. But I believe that the health industry and big pharma have the government in a stranglehold. They’re all bought. And so how can there ever really be recourse? So I hope that this galvanizes awareness around this issue, and forces people to really think about who they put into public office. That’s the only way that this situation can be changed—not by shooting people. That will just devolve into anarchy.
Suspected shooter Luigi Mangione is led into the Blair County Courthouse for an extradition hearing December 10, 2024 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
I mean, [with] the manifesto, it’s almost like he wanted to get his word out there. In a way, maybe he sacrificed his own life to bring more attention to this matter, because I don’t understand why else he would be still carrying the gun and the manifesto. He was posing in front of the camera. Or maybe he was just 26 and didn’t think it out. But from what I’ve read, he was extremely intelligent, went to an Ivy League school, and came from a family with means. So it’s kind of a mystery what would drive someone from that to actually shooting a guy on the sidewalk. Motive: That’s what we’re mainly interested in as writers. And there’s always a reason behind it. It’s possible he had some kind of a breakdown or fancied himself a hero, a Robin Hood. We’ll never know, really, unless he tells us.
As you mentioned, your episode ends with the killer walking free. What would you venture to be the outcome for Luigi Mangione?
The urgency of the father in our episode was that his nine-year-old daughter was dying. He had tried everything to get her the treatment, and it was denied. We’re in a different era, 22 years later. There’s so much violence around, so many guns. I think jurors could be sympathetic [toward Mangione]. Jurors could feel, gee, my aunt died of lack of care. My father was underinsured. I think it resonates with everyone because it’s a subject matter that affects all of us. Everyone knows someone who’s sick, who had problems with their insurance, and it seems that more and more claims are being denied. And I think they’ve destroyed the medical profession.
But he took a man’s life. He followed him and shot him. I don’t see any world where he will be getting off like the man did in our episode.
Do you remember how the episode landed when it first aired, if there was any pushback about the outcome?
I think that people felt it was a very delicate issue that was handled with sensitivity on both sides. But I do think in most episodes, the prosecution wins. And in this case, it was a hung jury, which doesn’t happen very often in Law & Order. So I think there was a little bit of head scratching about that. But the jury’s made up of human beings. And just like us, they were deadlocked.
Do you think the current iteration of Law & Order will try to tackle an episode that more closely mimics some of the beats of this killing?
I would assume so, yes. Because it’s all over the news, and one thing that Law & Order does wonderfully is rip from the headlines. To put the murder in the context of the world we live in today, I think would be something that they would want to tackle. I haven’t spoken with any of them. I don’t know if they have any plans, but something of this magnitude usually finds its way into the writers room at Law & Order.
If you were to write a story that addresses themes of health care vigilantism again, 22 years later, what would be your approach?
Well, I think that human emotion is the thing that drives drama. It’s not a political diatribe. There would have to be a human victim, I think. Someone that people could relate to in a personal way. So in our case, it was the little girl. But the insurance industry has changed so much since 2002 that I think that would have to be also part of the story in a much bigger way than it was in our episode. The lobbyists, the corporatization of health care, would have to be really examined in anything that someone’s going to write about now. It’s like David and Goliath. I think people feel completely helpless against that machine.
AI, the algorithms, that all would have to be brought into it. The deny rate has gone up, and some [providers] are using AI to make those decisions. It’s the loss of the human touch. It’s the corporatization of the medical industry. So those are bigger themes, but in order to get those bigger themes across, you have to find a real person who the viewer can relate to. And there’s no shortage of those these days.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Kylie Kelce Dethrones Joe Rogan’s Dominant Podcast
Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings