Mariska Hargitay opens up about acting in ‘daring’ episode written by Chris Meloni: ‘It was moving’
What’s better than watching two of the most beloved TV actors share the screen? Watching said actors share the screen in an episode written by one of them.
Yes, Chris Meloni revealed a few months ago that he would be writing an episode of his show, “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” and that Mariska Hargitay would be making a guest appearance.
“Oh, girlfriend’s coming on,” he told TODAY.com over the summer.
He also confirmed to People at the time that Hargitay will guest star in the episode he’s writing.
Hargitay and Meloni co-starred for 12 seasons as partners Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and built an incredible fan base in the process.
Meloni left “SVU” in 2011 and returned to the “Law & Order” universe as Stabler in 2021 on the “Organized Crime” spinoff, which is moving from NBC to Peacock for its fifth season. Their characters have crossed paths since his return in crossover episodes between both shows.
We don’t yet know when “OC” will premiere on Peacock. We also don’t know when the episode Meloni wrote — the second episode of the new season, he previously told us — will air, but we do know Hargitay’s thoughts on it.
In a recent interview with TODAY.com about her work with Purina’s Purple Leash Project, which you can read more about here, Hargitay took the time to reflect on working alongside Meloni again in this special episode, which she describes as “pretty great.”
When prompted with Meloni’s quote about his “girlfriend coming on,” Hargitay laughs and says, “I saw that. It’s so good. That’s what he calls me. I’m ‘girlfriend.’”
She describes Meloni’s writing as “amazing.”
“It was, you know, daring. It was risk-taking. It was moving. It was out of the box, the way he thinks,” she explains. “It was so fresh and so intimate.”
“Listen, nobody really understands our relationship the way we do,” Hargitay continues, “because we have such an incredible shorthand.”
It was a joy to say his words.
mariska hargitay on chris meloni’s writing
She also loves Meloni’s creativity and his “incredible thoughtfulness on every moment and how deep he goes into it.”
“It’s just fun for me to be with him because when we are together, there’s just an immediate drop-in, I think, that is unique to us — with all this incredible history,” Hargitay says.
“It was a joy to say his words,” she continues. “It was a joy to work on it with him. He’s an incredible director, an incredible leader and just an incredible artist.”
The two have also previously channeled their artistry in a different way: by practicing their best “drunk acting” between takes during the early seasons of “SVU.”
Hargitay first shared this nugget during an interview in June and recently discussed it again during an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
“I’m so good at it,” she told Meyers of what he described as this “hidden talent.”
“I beg them to write me a drunk scene,” she continued. “They won’t.”
While Hargitay and Meloni never got to fully show off this bit of acting on “SVU,” Meloni came close during an episode of the second season of “Organized Crime.” Stabler shows up to Benson’s apartment late one night after getting drugged during an undercover operation. He stumbles into her apartment, and his speech is slurred before he sits in a chair and sips on a glass of water. He also drops a huge bombshell on Benson, revealing he didn’t write the letter he gave to her after his abrupt return to her life: his wife, Kathy (Isabel Gillies), did.
The letter was mostly full of lines Kathy wrote about how Benson and Stabler “got in the way” of each other during their multiyear partnership, except for one line Stabler snuck in at the end and wrote himself: “In a parallel universe, it will always be you and I.”
After this reveal, Stabler crawls across the floor to Benson, who is standing, and puts his hand on her cheek before apparently passing out. It’s rare for fans to see Benson and Stabler touch in such an intimate way.
While reflecting on the scene, Hargitay again references her shorthand with Meloni.
“It’s a complete ease with each other,” she says, “and most of all, there’s so much trust.”
Hargitay says she trusts Meloni because he’s “so specific.”
“I trust his choices because he’s incapable of not telling the truth — as a person and an actor,” she explains while laughing.
As for the scene itself? “It was incredible,” Hargitay says.
“It was very different than what we do,” she adds.
“That was a really serious scene,” she explains, unlike when they’re having fun with their drunk acting.
“When we drunk act, it’s a different quality because it’s more of a — a little bit of a comedy spin,” she says, adding, “We’re doing the drunk acting, we’re refining, but we’re also making each other laugh.”
“With him, it’s a lot of — acting is reacting — and there’s a lot of just being present and reacting because of what was going on in the scene,” Hargitay explains about the letter scene. “Well, it’s just so rich and deep … between us.”
