‘Law & Order SVU’ Newcomer Described What It Was Like Auditioning With Mariska Hargitay
Law & Order SVU recently welcomed a new star to tag along with Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson. After screening with the veteran actor, Juliana Aidén Martinez’s life immediately changed.
How Juliana Aidén Martinez reacted to Mariska Hargitay
Martinez made her debut as Kate Silva in the recent season 26 premiere of Law & Order SVU. Prior to joining the squad, Martinez was most known for Sofia Vergara’s Griselda. But doing Griselda was a different experience than joining SVU. The Netflix miniseries didn’t have the history that SVU had, which is currently enjoying its 26th season on air. Before Martinez officially joined the cast, she had to figure out how to add something fresh to the show while still honoring its legacy.
“The creative challenge for me was, how do you honor the material and the foundation that already exists and yet bring something new that still honors the integrity and brings a different dynamic?” she recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “Then finding, where is a young woman’s voice now? Where does my voice and my community, where does it reside, and where is it relevant?”
To be a part of the show’s rich history, Martinez had to prove she could go toe to toe with Hargitay on the screen. The whole process happened incredibly quickly for the actor.
“I had never met Mariska before, and so justifiably, I was a little nervous. She was fantastic. It was kind of like when that finger fits perfectly into a glove. And within, I want to say, three days I joined the team,” she said.
Afterwards, Hargitay made Martinez feel even more at home by mentoring the new star.
“There’s kind of an innate admiration for Mariska and what she’s done for the show. She operates so much as a captain and No. 1 in the cast,” she said. “That really bleeds into that kind of relationship in which, ‘You can teach me so much, and I want to honor what you have, and then bring something new to it.’ And so there’s this neat, kind of mentee-mentorship quality.”
Why Juliana Aidén Martinez wanted to join ‘Law & Order SVU’
Like many, Martinez found herself exposed to SVU at an early age. Which, Martinez felt, spoke volumes about the show’s reach in the world of television.
“I watched it when I was in high school with my friends,” she once explained to The Wrap. “When I joined SVU, I asked my two best friends, ‘What are your first memories of SVU’?And they said, ‘I remember watching it together,’ and I thought that that was such an interesting observation. I feel like for so many young women, they’re watching it with their friends or their family. There’s some kind of [communal] or familial aspect to watching it.”
But Martinez also felt there was a more meaningful cause behind joining SVU. Hargitay has remarked how the topics that SVU covered meant a lot to fans over the years, which inspired her to develop the Joyful Heart foundation. It seems the show resonated with Martinez in a very similar way.
“It’s the longest-running show,” Martinez said. “It’s a show that has become such a cultural icon, but also a social platform for women’s stories and stories pertaining to sexual assault. And these are stories that typically…I have friends who’ve experienced this as well, and they don’t get the attention they deserve, nor the help they deserve. And with a show like this, I feel like it’s investing in the social progress and in women’s stories so that we can move the needle forward. And that was really, really important to me.”
How to get help: In the U.S., call the RAINN National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 to connect with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.
