Law & Order: SVU just wrapped filming its landmark 25th season, and Mariska Hargitay (Olivia Benson) is feeling all the things.
The Emmy Award-winning star of SVU opened up to NBC Insider about the weight of the show’s historic running hitting her at the wrap party — which she attended with one of her sons.
Mariska Hargitay attended the SVU Season 25 wrap party with her son
“People ask me, ‘25 years! 25 years!’ And as we shot [the season], they talked about it, and it was so difficult for me to really take in,” Hargitay said. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and it was the other night as I was going to the wrap party with my son, it just hit me: ‘I am going to the wrap party for my show that has been on for 25 seasons.’ And it just hit me and it was so beautiful for so many reasons.”
With 25 seasons, Hargitay cements her place as the longest-running actress on primetime television.
“I love my job,” she told NBC Insider. “I love going to work every day. I love the community that I’m in. I love my cast, my crew, and I love the intimacy of it all and the fact that we work in a culture that says, ‘Let’s do the work, let’s have a fun time, and best idea wins.’ It is such a team. It is such an incredible team, and we rely so much on each other. We’re a unit. It’s so sacred to me.”
The show is sacred to fans, too, who find catharsis in the show’s tackling of complex topics — and even healing.
“When I started SVU, very quickly I started to receive a different kind of fan letter,” she told Access in 2022. “Instead of, you know, ‘I love your show; you’re a great actress,’ it was women and men disclosing stories of abuse. People started sharing and saying, ‘Your show changed my life,’ and ‘I’ve never told anyone [about my abuse].'”
— Reporting by Stephanie Gomulka
