MARISKA Hargitay breaks down in tears as she talks about the end of one of the long-running show.

By Geoff Shearer

3 min read
March 11, 2010 – 7:39AM
DailyTelegraph

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BD Wong, Dann Florek, Diane Neal, Christopher Meloni, Mariska Hargitay Ice-T, Richard Belzer and Tamarie Tunie from Law
and Order: SVU / Supplied

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MARISKA Hargitay has bathed in critical and financial success as one half of the Law & Order: SVU crime-fighting team of Bens

on and Stabler – but dark clouds are brewing.

Hargitay has overcome serious challenges in her private life and acting career, but she’s about to face something that threatens

to tear both of them apart.

For 11 seasons she has played the supportive Det Olivia Benson to Chris Meloni’s no-nonsense Det Elliot Stabler.

The long days – up to 15 hours – on set have helped Hargitay and Meloni form a bond that goes far beyond their screen characters.

Both are married with children. Hargitay’s son, August, to husband Peter Hermann turns four in June. Meloni and his wife, Doris Sherman Williams, have two children: Sophia, who turns 9 this month, and Dante, 6.

Hargitay and Meloni have even bought a holiday beach property together for shared family vacations.

On set they talk of themselves as pseudo husband and wife, or brother and sister.

It’s little wonder Hargitay, 46, has difficulty holding back the tears when she talks about how that perfect working relationship is nearing its end.

Hargitay and Meloni, on the New York set of the show, dropped the bombshell. Meloni will walk from the show at the end of the next season.

“I can’t really imagine doing the show without Chris and I can’t imagine Olivia …” Hargitay says, halting to wipe away a tear.

“I don’t think she could be without him; she loves him, he’s her other half. He’s her husband, her man, her life, her rock.”

Meloni adds: “I think 12 years is enough, a good number. The writers will have fertile ground to figure out how to arc him (Elliot) out to another place.”

Meloni is interested in pursuing theatre work and “guerilla-style sleeper” films when he leaves.

“It will be a difficult transition. I mean, Jesus Christ, every day you get used to getting up early and working these hours.

“When you’re an actor (not working), it’s like, ‘Has anyone called yet?’

“And having to audition again, which I loathe.”

Their time together on the show has had its dramas. Hargitay suffered a partially collapsed lung in December 2008 after falling during a stunt. She had surgery in January and again in March last year to repair the damage.

A few months later, she and Meloni were in the news again when their employer, NBC, threatened to sack them during contract renegotiations.

Reportedly earning close to $400,000 an episode each, the pair were seeking a share in the show’s profits.

The dispute was settled after two months and their contracts were renewed for two more years.

Meloni says that is the date when he will walk, but Hargitay’s not ready yet.

“It’s been proven over and over to me that it’s the right thing for me to still be here. I wasn’t done even through all that crazy negotiation – it wasn’t about money, it was about something else for me,” she says. “I told them I never wanted to leave. I had every intention of coming back, I needed it to be a little different.

“But I never say never. I don’t know where I’ll be in another year. I might be done. I might go, ‘I’m so not done’.”

Hargitay says she doesn’t plan far ahead. Her desire to live in and for the present stems from a traumatic childhood.

Her mother, Hollywood bombshell Jayne Mansfield, died in a car crash in 1967. Hargitay, then 3 1/2, was asleep in the back with her two brothers. She was left with a zig-zag scar across one side of her head.

Raised by her Hungarian-born father Mickey Hargitay, a former Mr Universe, and his third wife, Hargitay says the incident was partly behind her desire to do charity work when she was about 20.

“I went to work at a house called Children’s Institute International. Kids who’d been taken from their parents went there before being placed in homes,” she says.

“My mother died when I was three, so I thought that would be the charity for me.

“All the kids had cigarette burns; they’d had the shit beaten out of them. You can’t imagine what we saw, with the kids. I almost had to stop working there because I couldn’t take it. Secondary trauma; it’s a bad thing. And then the kids would leave after you’d become attached to them. You’d go there every week and then they’d be gone.’’

For the second time in the interview, Hargitay is moved to tears. These are genuine emotions and were the impetus for her establishing the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004, an umbrella organisation for groups working with women and children who have been sexually abused.