Mariska Hargitay has played beloved TV character Olivia Benson for nearly half her life, and while she “has exceeded my wildest dreams,” she admits it has come at a cost.
In a conversation with Selena Gomez for Interview Emmy-winning magazine Law & Order: Special Victims Unit The star said it was “a process” for her to learn to detach herself from the show's difficult storylines when she leaves the set.
“When I started the show, I wasn't aware of how deeply it would touch me,” she told Gomez, explaining that wherever she goes with her husband and ex Safety Control Unit Her colleague Peter Hermann always emphasizes that the first question she is asked is about the crime rate in the area.
“There were times when I didn’t know how to protect myself, and I think I definitely had secondary trauma from being inundated with these stories and knowing that they were true,” she said, noting that many of the show’s storylines are pulled directly from real-life newspaper headlines. “Those were the parts that I didn’t know how to process, just because of the volume of them. That’s why I started Joyful Heart [Foundation]so I would feel like, at least, I was doing something about it.”
While the fact that the episodes are based on real events makes them harder to handle, Hargitay is also “happy” about it because it means the show is holding a mirror up to society and saying, “This is who we are. These are some of the worst things we do to each other.”
“One of the most rewarding parts of this work is how much community it has brought about,” she explained. “Women have learned so much about DNA, about going to the hospital and reporting, about what not to do and what to do after being assaulted. It’s really helped with justice for so many people, not to mention their healing. So, it’s been quite a journey.”
Safety Control Unit taught the actress more about sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse than she could have ever imagined. She admitted she didn't initially know much about the “particularly heinous” sex crimes the show covered, but she remembers thinking how progressive the script was when she first read it.
In the show's first year, Dick Wolf received an award from Mount Sinai's Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program. The night she received the honor, Hargitay said it was the night she first learned that one in three women will be assaulted in her lifetime and one in six men.
“That’s what started the foundation for me,” she said of Joyful Heart. According to its website, the organization’s mission is to transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, support survivors’ healing, and end this violence forever.
She continued, “That’s when I started to say, ‘I have to do something,’ because the show was obviously addressing the topic, but when I found out the statistics, I was like, ‘Why isn’t everyone talking about this?’ And if I didn’t know, I thought no one knew what an epidemic of violence against women was.”
From Safety Control Unit began in 1999, Hargitay's role has grown both on and off screen. Benson has gone from detective to sergeant to lieutenant and finally to captain of the Manhattan Special Victims Unit. Off screen, she not only stars in the series, but also serves as an executive producer and has directed several episodes.
At the time of the show's launch, however, Hargitay felt “overwhelmed and scared” by what she saw as a patriarchal environment.
“They set the rules in their universe and we just showed up,” she said. “But as I’ve grown and evolved, both as Mariska and as Olivia Benson, I think my favorite part is that as I’ve evolved, I haven’t given away pieces of myself. If anything, I’ve taken them back. So I’m in this really unique place of being a total badass. I know my value. I know my power. I know what I have to offer and I’m totally comfortable with my vulnerability, with all the ways that I still feel like a kid. It’s a really peaceful place to be.”
Law & Order: SVU Season 26 will debut October 3 on NBC.