Law & Order To Become A Show-Within-A-Show Self-Contained World

The meta-metaness of it all makes the head swim:

The story of slain actress Adrienne Shelly — an independent film star who once appeared as a guest star on an episode of “Law & Order” in 2000 — will be fictionalized in an upcoming [Law & Order episode], sources said yesterday.

Shelly was beaten to death and hanged from a shower rod in her Greenwich Village apartment last Nov. 1, allegedly by an illegal-immigrant construction worker with whom she had argued.

Now the NBC drama has put out a casting announcement seeking a Hispanic man to play a murderer who kills a woman after a dispute.

The casting notice calls for a male Hispanic between the ages of 19 to 24 to play an illegal immigrant named José Contreras who argues with a Manhattan woman named Erin Garrett. She falls, hits her head and is knocked unconscious.

Thinking he may have killed her, Contreras tries to cover up the incident by making it look like the woman hanged herself — and actually murders her in the process.

Given the drama’s rapid-fire production schedule, the episode, called “The Melting Pot,” could hit the air as early as next month.