Chevy Chase channeling Mel Gibson? No kidding.

He is not, to be sure, the guy we all remember. Foremost, the age: Chevy Chase just turned 63, and his hair is quite gray. He was a big star once, but has been AWOL (it seems) for most of this century. That’s why Friday’s turn on “Law & Order” (10 p.m., NBC) is one of the most intriguing cameos of the season.

Chase will be playing a character modeled loosely -- OK, directly -- on Mel Gibson and his tequila-fueled night-of-a-thousand-slurs last July, when he was pulled over by a Malibu cop and then launched into a rant against Jews.

Executive producer Nicholas Wootton declined to offer many details about Chase’s role but said: “Yes, it’s about a celebrity outburst and [involves] anti-Semitism and a traffic stop, and -- yes -- a body will be found. Yes indeed, though in a slightly untraditional way.”

So, how did a guy like Chase find his way to a show like this? Wootton explains that the booking came about “in a fairly banal way. His representatives called Matt Penn [another producer] and said he was interested in doing an episode, which is how a lot of this happens.”

A script based on the Gibson incident had just been written, and when Penn called Wootton to get his thoughts on Chase, he replied: “Go for it. Go for it right now.”

Chase plays a sitcom actor whose hit series was canceled two years earlier.