Olivia Benson to the rescue! Mariska Hargitay isn’t a real-life cop, but that didn’t stop her from stepping into protector mode when a little girl needed help. The Law & Order: SVU star was filming an episode of the popular NBC drama in a New York City park when a child who’d been separated from her mother mistook her for an actual police officer.
Hargitay apparently didn’t miss a beat when the girl approached her, according to reports. She swiftly paused filming to help the child find her mom, with whom she was soon reunited.
Hargitay, 60, was filming a scene for Law & Order: SVU Season 25 in Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Playground on April 10 when she encountered the lost child.
The actor, who has spent a quarter of a century playing an NYPD detective, talked to the girl, who had seen Hargitay’s badge and assumed she was a real police officer.
Filming on the episode was paused while Hargitay – who shares three children with her husband Peter Hermann – helped the girl find her mom, a witness told People.
After about 20 minutes, the girl was reunited with her mother.
While Hargitay hasn’t commented on the incident, she’s spoken in the past about how closely entwined her real self is with her famous character.
“I’ve been doing this for so long, and the character is me — it’s part of me. I couldn’t play it if it wasn’t,” she told The Cut in 2023.
On SVU, Hargitay’s Benson is committed to doing whatever it takes to protect victims of sexual assault, child abuse, and other devastating crimes. She’s said that she’s made it a point to really understand those issues in order to bring Benson to life on screen.
“I did so much work at the beginning when I learned about these issues — law enforcement, sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, trauma — that I’ve spent these last 24 years studying that. That studying continues, but I’ve also spent these last 24 years excavating myself and trying to understand my own inner landscape and which parts I give to that character and which parts that character unlocked in me,” she said in her interview with The Cut.
Many viewers connected with Benson and the stories told on SVU and reached out to Hargitay personally about their own experiences with sexual violence. In response, Hargitay started The Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering survivors of sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence.
Hargitay said that her husband and kids keep her grounded when dealing with the difficult stories on SVU. And because she lost her own mother, screen icon Jayne Mansfield, at an early age, family is especially important to her.
“I’m madly in love with my husband,” she said. “He’s my home. I come home and we laugh. My children are my angels. All I ever wanted was to be a mom and to have this family, because mine was broken apart at a very early age, so these things are so sacred to me.”
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