Malia Mendez | (TNS) Los Angeles Times
Mariska Hargitay has not escaped unscathed after a quarter century of fictional — and more recently, real-life — crime fighting.
Since 1999, the Emmy Award-winning actor has played Manhattan Det. Olivia Benson in NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” Unlike other shows in the franchise, “SVU” focuses on sexual offenses, wherein the victim survives and assists authorities in the investigation.
During her 25-year tenure on the show, Hargitay has struggled to remove herself emotionally from its plotlines — which, though fictional, are “ripped from the headlines,” she told “Only Murders in the Building” star Selena Gomez during a conversation published Monday in Interview magazine.
“When I started the show, I wasn’t aware of how deeply it would go into me,” Hargitay told Gomez. “I think I was definitely a victim of secondary trauma from being inundated with these stories and knowing that they were true.”
She added that whenever she and her husband travel, her first question is, “What’s the crime rate here?”
“SVU” episodes portray “especially heinous” crimes, as its opening sequence dubs them, from child trafficking to serial reproductive abuse. The subject matter is heavy enough that Hargitay keeps a private enclave on set, where she regularly goes to regroup off-camera.
“I barricade myself in here to get a little inspiration,” she told Parade magazine in 2019, “because I’d be lying if I said it isn’t difficult to be inundated with the material. It’s still a difficult world for me.”
Before the show, Hargitay told Gomez, she didn’t know much about sexual assault or domestic abuse.
Then, during the first year of “SVU,” she accompanied show creator Dick Wolf to an awards ceremony presented by the Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program. That night, she said, she heard the statistics — one in three women and one in six men are survivors of sexual violence — that compelled her to found her Joyful Heart Foundation.
Established in 2004, the nonprofit seeks to “transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, support survivors’ healing, and end this violence forever,” per its website.
Through its End the Backlog program, Joyful Heart over the last decade has worked with the Detroit Police Department to test thousands of backlogged rape kits, which led to the discovery of “22 serial rapists,” “Dateline: True Crime Weekly” podcast host Andrea Canning reported last month. Their effort was also detailed in HBO’s 2017 documentary “I Am Evidence,” which Hargitay produced and appears in.
“It’s having a ripple effect across the country,” Canning said. “It’s making changes everywhere, for police departments, for prosecutors’ offices.”
“These stories are not new. This has been going on since the beginning of time. But it’s getting the attention it deserves now, and it took awhile,” Hargitay told USA Today in 2019. “That’s why I’m so grateful for the #MeToo movement and Time’s Up because now our voices are in chorus together, and they’re just stronger together and louder together, and now the culture is changing because everyone is aware of it.”
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Ultimately, Hargitay told Gomez, while “SVU” empowered her to raise awareness about sexual assault, Joyful Heart enabled her to “do something” about it.
“This has surpassed my wildest dreams in terms of a career, but also in terms of personal fulfillment — that I could marry my acting with my philanthropy or with a personal mission to have a part in people’s healing,” she said. “I think about that often.”
In the same way, she said, she’s had the privilege of evolving “both as Mariska and as Olivia Benson.”
In the early days of “SVU,” she continued, “I was not the boss and I had no power.”
“[Now], I know my worth, I know my power, I know what I have to offer, and I’m totally comfortable with my vulnerability, with all the ways I still feel like a little girl. That’s a really peaceful place to be.”
Season 26 of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” premieres Thursday, Oct. 3, at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.
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