Dylan McDermott shifting from Dick Wolf’s ‘Organized Crime’ to ‘FBI: Most Wanted’ as new lead

It looks like Dylan McDermott may be staging a comeback to the right side of the law.

The Emmy Award-nominated actor who plays cunning crime boss Richard Wheatley on “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” is moving to “FBI: Most Wanted,” following the departure of series lead Julian McMahon.

Both series are created and executive produced by Dick Wolf, the kingpin of procedural dramas.

It’s not known who McDermott will play on “Most Wanted,” but with McMahon’s team leader Jess LaCroix exiting, it’s easy to envision McDermott picking up his mantle.

The 60-year-old Golden Globe Award winner rose to prominence in the late 1990s as the deeply sensitive and compassionate legal eagle Bobby Donnell on the hit ABC series “The Practice.”

As Wheatley, McDermott shines playing against type with the role of the narcissist narcotics lord. It tracks with some of his more recent roles; most notably in 2020′s “Hollywood,” in which he portrayed a pimp who runs business out of a gas station.

His “Organized Crime” character was reportedly only supposed to appear in the show’s first season, but proved to be so popular as the arch nemesis to Christopher Meloni’s Detective Elliot Stabler that McDermott was given a very “lucrative” deal to shoot eight episodes for the “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” spinoff’s second season.

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