“ | Why, Mr. Cutter, what a wonderful imagination you have! Maybe you should write a book... or, if you ever wanna party with somebody nice and tight, sugar daddy, you just give me a call. | „ |
~ Tenny alternately rebuffing and flirting with Michael Cutter. |
Kate Tenny is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Sweetie". She is a literary agent who murders one of her clients to stop him from revealing that she wrote his bestselling memoir and passed him off as the author.
She was portrayed by Vivica A. Fox, who also portrayed Vernita Green in Kill Bill.
Early life[]
When Tenny was a child, she was forced into prostitution by her abusive mother, herself a prostitute. Tenny was arrested for solicitation at ages 16 and 18.
As an adult, Tenny got away from her mother and put her past behind her, reinventing herself as an investigative reporter for The Village Voice. She wrote a series of articles about child prostitution, profiling a number of teenage boys who sold their bodies to truckers at pit stops. Eventually, however, she switched careers, becoming a literary agent because the pay was better.
She used her research, as well as her own traumatic childhood experiences, as the basis of a book she titled Little Whore, and created a protagonist, "Sweetie Ness", whom she based on the male prostitutes she interviewed, particularly one named Cody Larson. She knew that it would not sell as fiction, however, so she marketed it as a tell-all memoir and hired an actor named Dale Marks to portray "Sweetie" at book signings and other promotional events.
"Sweetie"[]
After a book signing, Tenny and Marks go to an after-hours party, where they are both accosted by Janice Dunlap, an obsessed fan who has been stalking Marks because she believes that she and "Sweetie" are destined to be together. They brush her off, but she finds an audience in Larson, who has followed Tenny and Marks to the party, and who tells her that he is the real "Sweetie".
Dunlap refuses to believe him, but Marks overhears the conversation and threatens to reveal Tenny's fraud unless she gives him a bigger share of the profits she is making from the book. Tenny knows that neither Larson nor Dunlap can prove anything, but she fears that Marks will become a liability for the next book she plans to write about "Sweetie", so she decides to get rid of him. She lures him to one of the truck stops portrayed in the book and shoots him in the head, killing him.
When NYPD Homicide Detectives Kevin Bernard and Cyrus Lupo inform Tenny of "Sweetie"'s murder the next day, she feigns grief, and manipulates the investigation to send them to a truck stop where she knows Larson is hooking so they will arrest him for the murder. Sure enough, when Lupo goes undercover and solicits Larson's services, Larson cannot resist bragging that he is the real "Sweetie", so Lupo arrests him for murder.
Executive Assistant District Michael Cutter and Assistant District Attorney Connie Rubirosa prosecute Larson for Marks' murder, in the process discovering Tenny's fraud. She insists that, while "Sweetie" is a composite character based on the various hustlers she interviewed as a reporter, she was merely trying to tell the world about the issue of child sex trafficking. Meanwhile, Dunlap, who now believes that Larson is the real "Sweetie", confesses to murdering Marks in order to protect him, but Cutter does not believe her and gets her to admit that she is lying while cross-examining her.
Cutter and Rubirosa ultimately convict Larson for Marks' murder. Something troubles them, however; during her testimony, Dunlap said that Marks had answered a phone call 30 minutes before his murder and went off in the direction of the truck stop where his body was found, a call only the killer could have made - but there are no records of Larson making any calls that night. Acting on a hunch, they examine Tenny's phone records, and find that she called Marks that night. They also unseal her juvenile arrest records for prostitution, and they realize that she is the real "Sweetie".
They confront Tenny at her office as she is leaving for a launch party for Little Whore with the phone call she made to Marks, which she explains away as reminding him of their media appearances the next day. Cutter is not fooled, however, and says that she must have killed Marks to keep her past as a child prostitute secret. Tenny laughs the accusation aside, saying that Cutter has an author's imagination and should write his own book; she then comes on to him, saying that he can "party" with her anytime, before leaving for the launch party. Cutter and Rubirosa vacate Larson's conviction, but they do not have enough evidence to charge Tenny with anything.
Trivia[]
- She is loosely based upon James Frey, who marketed a fictional biography, A Million Little Pieces, as his autobiographical account of life as a teenage prostitute.
External links[]
- Kate Tenny on the Law & Order Wiki
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