Mariska Hargitay, one of TV’s most beloved stars (she’s played Olivia Benson on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for 27 seasons, longer than anyone else has played a single character on an American primetime live-action show) and one of film’s most exciting new directors (her debut documentary My Mom Jayne won Critics Choice and Producers Guild awards), is the guest on the latest episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, which was recorded in front of an audience at the just-wrapped Napa Valley StreamFest.
As you can hear via the audio player above or any major podcast app, and as you can read below in excerpts lightly edited for clarity and brevity, the 62-year-old Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner reflected on the 1967 car accident that claimed the life of her mother, movie star Jayne Mansfield, and injured her; how, when she was 34, the age at which Mansfield died, she too almost lost her life in a road accident, and how surviving that changed her outlook on life; and why, starting during the COVID-19 pandemic, she decided to make a film about her mom — and also ended up divulging long-held secrets about her father.
She also revealed juicy information about SVU, including that she has been asked to direct the show’s upcoming 600th episode, and that, back during the making of the show’s 24th season, she and costar Chris Meloni — whose characters audiences have long wanted to hook-up — did indeed film a scene in which their characters kissed, only to have Dick Wolf veto it in favor of the near-kiss that made it to air.
On the accident that claimed the life of her mother, Jayne Mansfield…
“I certainly don’t remember the accident. And as I say in the film, I don’t know that I remember my mother — the two memories that I have, I don’t know if they’re real memories or they’re things that I wished happened or possibly a photograph that I saw. So that’s hard. But as we know, the kind of trauma that I endured certainly stays in the body and gets stuck until we work it out and we deal with it. I had a lot of PTSD as a child and a lot of anxiety from that, and there would be things that would trigger it. I didn’t really have anything to compare it to because I was a kid, but it lived in me … And so, through the therapy I’ve done, and through making [My Mom Jayne], it’s been extraordinary to experience so much healing in the process of storytelling but also to have so much internal space back. And that’s the best way I can describe it is that when that kind of stuff leaves your body, your nervous system settles and you become a different person.”
On people telling her, early in her career, that she needed to change things about herself…
“So many people told me to change things about myself. My first and favorite one was I walked into an audition at a network, and I met with the head of casting, the head of talent, and he said, ‘Oh, I was expecting a blonde.’ And I went, ‘Well, sorry!’ And then he proceeded to ask me what my real name was, which is funny. I said, ‘Do you think that I made this up? If I was going to make up a name, I don’t know that it would be Mariska Hargitay,’ which by the way, no one can say. It should have been ‘Mariska Hardtosay.’ And then it was just a lot of, ‘You should get a nose job. You should do this. Have you ever thought about that? You’re too this, you’re too that.’ You just hear you’re too everything. ‘You’re too short. You’re too tall. You’re too ethnic. You’re too plain. You’re too pretty. You’re not pretty.’ You just hear it all. At the end of the day, you’re like, ‘Whatever.’”
On almost losing her life at 34, the same age at which one of her grandmothers and her mother died…
“I was on a motorcycle, which I never ride on. I was riding on the back. I had been invited to Cirque du Soleil in Vegas, and my godson was coming. [The others in her group who were making the trip from L.A.] were a bunch of cool motorcycle people. I said, ‘I’ll only go if I can drive the child.’ So I drove the child in my car, and then two hours in they said, ‘Mariska, come on. Don’t be tight. Just get on the motorcycle.’ And, of course, I put on a good jacket and I said, “Okay, but just for a mile.” I got on the motorcycle, and we stopped at a stop sign, and the car behind me was [distracted and then realized they were about to hit us] and they tried to veer off, but there was a telephone pole, so they veered off, and then they went back and hit our motorcycle. We were stopped, so the driver went flying and I went flying. The driver broke his femur in three places and his tibia and his fibula and was in a cast. I thought I was dying as I was going through the air. That was my thought, like, ‘Oh, I’m 34. My mother was 34. She was in a car. I just got hit by a car. Wow, I didn’t know it was going to go like this.’ It was very slow-mo. And then I landed — and I was fine… my ankle blew up like a grapefruit, but it was not even fractured… When your mother dies at 34 and your grandmother dies at 34, you think you’re going to die at 34. And so that was the moment when I went, ‘Oh, I’m not my mother, and I don’t have that karmic curse, or whatever it was.’ I very much went, ‘Oh, I have a whole different trajectory that I’m doing.’”
On playing Olivia Benson on SVU for 27 years and counting…
“It’s been beautiful because there’s been kind of a parallel growth with my character, Olivia Benson, and Mariska, and we had each other to go through this together — becoming a leader, finding the equilibrium in that, becoming a mother on the show and having to manage my people, my squad, when we used to be even, and then all of a sudden you’re the boss … And I think I am a different actor after My Mom Jayne. That’s just a fact.”
On directing SVU’s upcoming 600th episode…
“They just asked me to direct the 600th! Which is episode six next year. It’s crazy. Even I can’t download it. Even I go, ‘Wait, what?!’ No, it’s nuts.”
On people who do cable or streaming shows…
“I go, how many episodes do you do? They go, ‘eight’ and ‘10.’ And I go like this, ‘Sweetheart, don’t talk to me! You don’t know what endurance is. Run a marathon, then call me.’ No, but it’s child’s play — I said it, and I’ll say it again, it’s child’s play. It’s been 22 episodes for 27 years [on SVU]. I think this year we did 21 — I got one off.”
On she and Chris Meloni disagreeing with Dick Wolf about the season 24 scene in which Benson and Stabler nearly kiss but don’t — and revealing that they shot a different version…
“I think we felt that this moment was earned, that this thing could happen for a second — and so that’s how we shot it. [audience goes crazy] Don’t you wish you were there for that?! Yeah. We shot it a couple different ways. And then they [Wolf and others] had the choice in editing, and they [opted to use the near-kiss version rather than the kiss] … We [she and Meloni] disagreed. We disagreed because we thought that it was earned and the way it was dealt with was really complex and very beautiful and very human and showed the complexity of their relationship and all the different ways that they’re connected … [But] no matter what I want, Dick Wolf can totally just say, ‘Uh, no.’”
On whether or not Meloni, whose L&O spinoff was just canceled, could come back to SVU…
“Chris has his own show now [Hulu’s upcoming The Land]. At some point? I mean, anything’s possible. Yes. The answer to that is he and I are not … it’s not done. It’s not dun-dun [the L&O sound] — see what I did there?”
On why she decided to make My Mom Jayne…
“I set out a movie to get to know my mother and to find out why the choices that were made [by her in her career] were made … So much of what I thought, I was wrong about, and there was so much healing that came out of it, because I actually was curious and got to understand the other side of it … One of the things I talk about in the film is, it was very difficult for me as a child to hear my mother’s voice — this high-pitched sex symbol voice was so painful and embarrassing and stressful because, as a child, you just want your mom, you just want authenticity and you just want to feel safe … [But through the documentary] I got to see the private voice. I saw this woman in her public voice in her career that she architected by herself at 21 and then got to hear her voice with her kids and all these moments where she dropped down. I went, ‘Ah, there you are. There you are.’ … There was so much healing and love and so many aha moments and so much bonding with my siblings and so much light being shed… It was just one of the greatest, most cathartic, healing experiences of my life.”
On the photo of Sophia Loren side-eyeing her mom’s cleavage…
“I used to be really embarrassed about it. And now I go, ‘You go, girl.’”
On what her mom would have made of My Mom Jayne…
“I think she would be so proud of me and so grateful to be introduced to the world for the amazing, complex woman and beautiful artist that she was. I don’t think my mom got to make the kind of movies and the kind of art that she wanted to make. We didn’t have the opportunity to make a movie together — and yet we made one together.”
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