By India McCarty
Could LAW & ORDER: SVU get to Season 30? Star Mariska Hargitay thinks so.
“I do. How about that? I do,” she told Deadline when asked about a potential 30th season. “I love my show. I love my cast. I love my showrunner, my writers, my producers. I feel like the luckiest, happiest actress. I love Dick Wolf, and I’m so challenged still.”
Hargitay continued, “One of the things that’s been so exciting is, we just finished Season 27. I just watched the final episode of Season 27, and I thought it was the best of the season, and my best. What a way to finish a season after 27 years. So, I don’t want to go anywhere right now.”
“It’s been amazing,” she said. “The show really knows how to work with my schedule — I shot my movie, I figured out how to do it, I’m going to do a play now on Broadway.”
Related: SVU Star Is a Real-Life Hero: Here’s What Happened
Hargitay has played Detective Olivia Benson on LAW & ORDER: SVU since the show’s premiere in 1999.
In an episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, the actress shared that she relates to her character’s “compassion” and “empathy.”
“[We both] feel the fear and do it anyway,” Hargitay explained. “She’s not as funny as I am and she doesn’t have this much joy and balance, but she’s awesome so we give her a pass on all her flaws.”
In a 2017 interview with Entertainment Tonight, the show’s cast weighed in on the show’s enduring popularity.
“At its heart, it’s a show about good versus evil,” Michaela McManus, who played ADA Kim Greylek on Season 10, told the outlet. “In a world that’s increasingly scary and uncertain, people want to believe there are tireless champions like Benson and Stabler.”
Hargitay added, “I knew when I read [the script] it was the greatest show I ever read for…It was the beginning of something, and the trajectory of my life and career — and certainly me as an actor — changed from being on that show.”
Co-producer Neal Baer called Hargitay’s casting “the perfect marriage of storytelling with an actress on television.”
“She is the face of the show but also the face for empowered women,” the show’s creator, Dick Wolf, said. “She capitalized on it in an incredibly positive way with her foundation, Joyful Heart [an organization that supports survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse] , and used it in a way that you hope people would use their positions.”
There’s still a ways to go before Season 30, but SVU fans are keeping their fingers crossed!
Read Next: How What We Watch Impacts Us and the Actors Who Create It
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
Share:
– Content: +1