{"id":206,"date":"2026-05-25T13:05:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T13:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=206"},"modified":"2026-05-25T13:05:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T13:05:58","slug":"mariska-hargitay-trades-her-badge-for-confetti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=206","title":{"rendered":"Mariska Hargitay Trades Her Badge for Confetti"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mariska Hargitay, the longtime star of \u201cLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit,\u201d recently stepped onto the stage of the Hudson Theatre, where she would soon make her Broadway d\u00e9but. \u201cIt\u2019s just so magical,\u201d she said, under an array of hanging light bulbs. Her intense \u201cS.V.U.\u201d character, Olivia Benson, investigates sexual-assault crimes; Hargitay, who is more lighthearted than Benson, had a snazzy new haircut and wore jeans, a boxy pink blouse, and lilac stiletto heels. This week begins her run in \u201cEvery Brilliant Thing,\u201d the interactive one-actor London import. She is replacing Daniel Radcliffe; the stage was strewn with confetti and handwritten notes from his show the night before. \u201cYou know what\u2019s so funny?\u201d Hargitay said. \u201cI saw the show twice, but I haven\u2019t been here since then. I\u2019ve been rehearsing in a normal room. So it just hit me. Yesterday they told me I have to look up.\u201d She looked up: three tiers of Beaux-Arts splendor, opera boxes, Tiffany tile work, and nine hundred and seventy gold velvet seats. \u201cI mean, look at this,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hargitay, sixty-two and the highest-paid, longest-tenured actor on prime-time television, has played Benson since 1999. (Her fan base includes wearers of \u201cHOT FOR HARGITAY<\/em>\u201d T-shirts and the Knicks hero Jalen Brunson, who hugs her, courtside, after home games.) She has produced and directed; she loves Broadway and has seen \u201cHamilton\u201d twenty-seven times. Yet the new role is daunting: she hasn\u2019t done theatre since high school. Her Playbill<\/em> bio refers to her \u201cside hustle for the last twenty-seven years\u201d and thanks a nun who encouraged her to act in eleventh grade. \u201cI certainly didn\u2019t have a lot of stage credits,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEvery Brilliant Thing,\u201d by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe, centers on a narrator recalling growing up, a suicidal mother, and efforts to remind the mother about the innumerable \u201cbrilliant things\u201d\u2014ice cream, water fights, roller coasters\u2014that make life worth living. (The handwritten notes suggested other brilliant things; one, near Hargitay\u2019s feet, said \u201cEVOLVING NICKNAMES<\/em>.\u201d) She said she\u2019d felt immediately drawn to the play, and had a \u201cbeautiful exchange of energy\u201d with Radcliffe after being dazzled by his performance. \u201cWhat a light of a human,\u201d she said. She\u2019d told him, \u201cI just want you to know that I\u2019m the real Harry Potter.\u201d She\u2019d pulled her bangs aside and said, \u201cSee this?\u201d Like Harry, her forehead is marked with a lightning-bolt scar. \u201cHe was, like\u2014\u201d She imitated Radcliffe\u2019s stunned reaction. \u201cWe had this very deep connection\u2014some kind of weird passing of the baton.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scar is essential to Hargitay\u2019s origin story. As she details in the 2025 documentary \u201cMy Mom Jayne,\u201d which she directed, she got it at age three, in a car accident that killed her mother, the actress Jayne Mansfield. Hargitay grew up with grief, as well as with the legacy of a famous movie-star mother she couldn\u2019t remember. \u201cI understand trauma,\u201d she said. \u201cWhether it\u2019s your mother dying in a car accident, or being sexually assaulted\u2014trauma is trauma.\u201d Audiences relate to struggle, she added: \u201cThe only way out is through.\u201d Vulnerability is strength; so is crying. \u201cMy tears aren\u2019t weak,\u201d she said. \u201cBaby, I\u2019m owning all of it. If anything, you should be scared<\/em>.\u201d She beamed.<\/p>\n

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Mansfield\u2019s Broadway d\u00e9but had been at the theatre next door, the Belasco, in \u201cWill Success Spoil Rock Hunter?\u201d in 1955. \u201cAs I\u2019m beginning a new chapter, it just can\u2019t be an accident,\u201d Hargitay said. She got this new part unconventionally. \u201cThey heard me say on \u2018Good Hang with Amy Poehler\u2019 that I wanted to do theatre,\u201d she said. \u201cI got the offer\u2014magnificent. I called Amy immediately and said, \u2018Hey, baby, thank you.\u2019\u00a0\u201d On the podcast, they had \u201clet it rip\u201d: \u201cI always thought I\u2019d be a comedian, and Amy thought that she wanted to do drama. We laughed about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore I got \u2018S.V.U.,\u2019 I had a development deal for a dramedy, \u00e0 la \u2018Ally McBeal,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Hargitay went on. She\u2019d ignored the prophecy of a psychic who told her that she\u2019d move to New York and become famous for her serious face. Shortly afterward, she got \u201cS.V.U.\u201d\u2014\u201cso progressive, so groundbreaking\u201d\u2014and abandoned the development deal. Many viewers have confided their own sexual-assault experiences to her; she started a charity, the Joyful Heart Foundation, to support survivors. \u201cI felt the same way about this play as I did about \u2018S.V.U.,\u2019\u00a0\u201d she said. \u201cIt felt like this gift\u2014everything that matters to me. These themes are so brutal, and yet there is light.\u201d She stood up and performed the first scene, as warm and exuberant as her regular conversation. Later, she cited some of her own \u201cbrilliant things\u201d (Ping-Pong, mermaids, coziness, Linda Ronstadt, dragonflies). \u201cIronically, I\u2019m obsessed with confetti,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you look back, there\u2019s photos of me like this.\u201d She picked up a handful of confetti and threw it over her head, enraptured. \u201cI do this all the time.\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

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On a break from \u201cLaw & Order: S.V.U.,\u201d the actress takes over for Daniel Radcliffe in \u201cEvery Brilliant Thing\u201d\u2014steps away from where her mother, Jayne Mansfield, had her Broadway d\u00e9but. Sarah Larson writes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-boards"],"yoast_head":"\nMariska Hargitay Trades Her Badge for Confetti - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=206\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mariska Hargitay Trades Her Badge for Confetti - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On a break from \u201cLaw & Order: S.V.U.,\u201d the actress takes over for Daniel Radcliffe in \u201cEvery Brilliant Thing\u201d\u2014steps away from where her mother, Jayne Mansfield, had her Broadway d\u00e9but. 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