Mariska Hargitay Told Dick Wolf to Send Her Competition Home When She Auditioned for ‘Law & Order: SVU’
Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay secured the role of a lifetime after auditioning for Dick Wolf’s spin-off show. But she already made a huge impression on the series after she demanded the showrunner to get rid of her competing actors.
Mariska Hargitay once recalled one of her first interactions with Dick Wolf
Hargitay’s perseverance paid off when she was cast as the iconic Olivia Benson after years of trying to make it as an actor. Initially, however, the role was unlike most she played beforehand. SVU would dive deep into heavy and disturbing subject matter her team wasn’t sure Hargitay would like.
“I was like, “This is it,'” she recalled in an interview with Parade. “My manager was worried because it was very dark and not up my alley because I liked comedy. And I was like, ‘This is right up my alley.’ Never in my life had something been more known to me.”
She had to go on several auditions before being offered the role. One of those auditions saw her confronting Wolf personally about all the other actors invited to test for the part. The confident veteran basically told Wolf that her competition was wasting their time.
“When I saw other actresses in the room, I walked into Dick Wolf’s office and said, ‘You gotta be kidding! What’s with the other women? This is my part, sweetheart. Tell them to go home,’” she told the LA Times.
Wolf didn’t acquiesce, but that didn’t stop Hargitay. She was so invested in the role that she couldn’t help but ask Wolf a few questions about it.
“I said to him, ‘Tweak me.’ He said, ‘You want to be tweaked?’ I said, ‘I didn’t drive all this way not to be tweaked.’ So he gave me a note, which was, of course, genius. I did what he suggested and told him, ‘That was good.’ He laughed, and I left. Two-and-a-half weeks later, he called and said, ‘You’re flying to New York to test for the role,’” she said.
How Mariska Hargitay injected some of herself into her ‘SVU’ role
After Hargitay nabbed the role, it was noted that Wolf listened to some of the actor’s own advice. He further molded the character of Olivia Benson to better suit Hargitay.
“I’m more impulsive and instinctual than she is,” Hargitay said. “She’s more calculating, although sometimes she lets it out. Other times, she has to squelch what she’s feeling. My challenge as an actress is in maintaining the balance and finding the boundaries between her and me. One profound difference is that Olivia doesn’t want to get married or have kids. I can’t imagine that. My goals in life have always been to act and have a family. I have three godchildren whom I adore.”
Still, despite their differences, Hargitay admired Olivia Benson more than anything. She enjoyed the character’s independence and unwavering sense of justice. At the time, the Golden Globe winner believed there wasn’t anything like Olivia Benson on TV.
“Olivia is completely empathetic and feels things deeply,” she said. “I think she may be an unprecedented woman detective on TV. She’s allowed to be female and gentle in a man’s world.”
How Mariska Hargitay experienced a rebirth with her ‘Law & Order: SVU’ character
Hargitay experienced the tremendous growth her character went through firsthand. Audiences watched Olivia Benson evolve from a detective all the way to captain. Not only that, but Hargitay and her character managed to lead the show on their own after Chris Meloni left the show. The changes Olivia Benson went through only brought Hargitay closer to her character.
“I was the second detective alongside Elliot Stabler. He was the male lead and a little more experienced, and I was trying to catch up. … As I became more comfortable with the character, you saw this powerful woman emerge. In a way, it was a rebirth, and that was powerful and exciting and beautifully uncomfortable to reckon with one’s own power,” she said in an interview with People.
