Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion (22 page)

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Authors: Susan Green,Randee Dawn

BOOK: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion
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Meloni manages to keep in shape. “Some mornings it’s roll out of bed, work out, half hour with the family, come out here, go home, roll into bed.” This routine is a frequent regimen.
1:30 P.M.
The company has relocated to the side of the house, in the driveway. The area with the TV monitors is called the “Video Village,” so that’s what has moved. The action is now inside the home.
2:40 P.M.
Everyone shifts again, this time across the street to the other house, where a man washing his taxi will be questioned by Stabler and Benson. Hargitay is here; she and Meloni rehearse with the actors playing the cab driver and his wife. The male character is supposed to look as creepy as possible, so he’s unshaven with a script-mandated beer gut hanging over tight shorts.
2:45 P.M.
A crew member brings Meloni his lunch—basic spinach, rice, and some kind of crumbly meat—wrapped up between two plates. He walks away with the food after rehearsal finishes.
Another setup, for a dolly shot this time, is in progress. “Let’s lay this track and beat this storm,” says Leto, squinting up at the sky. “We’re gonna do this scene in an hour.”
Hargitay trots after Meloni: “I took a boat ride without you!” she taunts him, referring to the other day at Battery Park.
MONDAY, JULY 28
When what’s normally an eight-day shoot
SVU
shoot was extended to ten, the authors realized they would be unable to stick around till the bittersweet end. So, this section of the diary is provided by Rick Johnson, a singer-songwriter, Richard Belzer’s regular stand-in, and our surrogate fly-on-the-wall for the final countdown of “Lunacy.”
7 A.M.
Cast and crew gather with light conversation as to what everyone did over the weekend. The main topic is the movies that opened, specifically
The Dark Knight
versus
Step Brothers
.
9 A.M.
Benson and Stabler are in the interrogation room questioning suspect Orlando McTeer.
11:30 A.M.
A rehearsal of the scene in which M.E. Warner informs the detectives that the victim, an astronaut, was named Marga Janssen.
11:50 A.M.
Leto and the DP are shuffling back and forth from the squad room to the interrogation room. For use in the next three scenes, they’re shooting with the B (secondary) camera to create five inserts: the picture of Vince that Benson will send from her cell phone to Fin’s; Stabler’s hands holding Anton’s autograph book; and Marga’s missing necklace under a magnifying glass at a pawn shop.
1 P.M.
The actors are again chatting about their weekend activities, such as the stand-up comedy show that Belzer did in New York and Ice’s trip to Vegas for a musical performance.
1:10 P.M.
Leto reins in Florek, Belzer, Ice, Meloni, and Hargitay, reminding them they have a lot more work to do in “the hot zone” under the lights. This takes place in the squad room, where they must gather around the “multiplex”—a display panel with six screens that will show pictures of the victim, the crime scene, and the inserts that are still being shot.
2:15 P.M.
Lunch is called. Leto has blocked the scene as a “oner,” meaning all the dialogue is caught in a single continuous movement of the Steadicam. He and Pattison continue overseeing the B-camera inserts in progress.
2:55 P.M.
An espresso/cappuccino machine has been set up for a few hours in the holding room for cast and crew, compliments of writer Dan Truly.
5 P.M.
The sequence of Marga Janssen in space. Due to technical difficulties with the multiplex and video equipment, Leto has to shoot the second half of the scene first, with Cragen joining the detectives.
7 P.M.
A tall stand-in for Brolin off-camera will provide someone for the other actors to look at and talk to in a rehearsal.
7:15 P.M.
Leto and Pattison are shooting B-camera inserts of the hands belonging to “photo-doubles’ in place of Meloni, Hargitay, and Ice-T.
8:19 P.M.
Inserts finished. B-camera wraps.
8:22 P.M.
A-camera wraps and Leto thanks everyone for a wonderful episode.
And thanks to Rick for standing in as our eyes and ears. Come to think of it, thanks to an amazing
SVU
cast, crew, and production team for a wonderful—albeit a wee bit toasty—visit to your world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ACTORS AND THEIR CHARACTERS
“He who knows others is wise; He who knows himself is enlightened”
—
THE WAY OF LAO-TZU
, 604-531 B.C.
 
POLICE
Mariska Hargitay (Det. Olivia Benson, 1999-Present)
Originally From:
California
Other Wolf Films Associations: Law & Order: Trial By Jury
(Det. Olivia Benson, 2005);
Law & Order
(Det. Olivia Benson, “Flaw,” “Fools for Love,” and “Entitled: Part 2,” 2000)
Mariska Hargitay (Det. Olivia Benson)
Selected Other Credits:
(Film)
Perfume
(Darcy, 2001),
Lake Placid
(Myra Okubo, 1999); (TV)
Prince Street
(Det. Nina Echeverria, 1997-2000),
ER
(Cynthia Hooper, 1997-98),
Tequila and Bonetti
(Officer Angela Garcia, 1992),
Falcon Crest
(Carly Fixx, 1988)
Upcoming Project:
(Film)
Thira
(associate producer, 2009)
Just the Facts
About Hargitay:
She may have gotten an early start on a primetime soap, but there was something about Mariska Hargitay that told casting directors she really ought to be in police work. The daughter of 1950s icon Jayne Mansfield and former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay, Mariska—a toddler asleep in the car when her mother was killed in an automobile accident—went on to pursue acting in high school and at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. She then bounced around in film, finding a home on TV, even if her parts rarely lasted a season.
“I think acting is really hard,” Hargitay says. “Some people are naturally gifted, and I’ve had to work on it. My father would tell me I was this champion, and I was going to be the best, but I struggled so long and I didn’t think I was the best—and I still don’t.” A turning point came when she finished an extended stint on
ER
and got a pilot script from her agent, who noted that it was very dark. “It was a done deal from the moment I read it,” she says of the
SVU
script. “I felt so connected to it; I knew this was my role somehow.”
Since joining the force in 1999 Hargitay has married a fellow cast member (Peter Hermann, who occasionally plays defense lawyer Trevor Langan), had a child with him, and earned six Emmy nominations and one win (in 2006). The win was a bittersweet moment, as it came just weeks before her ailing father’s death. Says Hargitay, “Because he’d been my coach in real life and because he was the person who told me not to quit and because I thought I was really bad—it was such a beautiful ending to the story, this forty-year story of somebody believing in you when you didn’t believe in yourself.”
About Benson:
As the product of her late mother Serena’s rape, Benson tends to live in the moment while simultaneously living to seek out her past—so details on her are sketchy. According to Hargitay, “She’s on one side driven, focused, feel-the-fear-but-do-it-anyway, brave, courageous, obsessed with justice to a fault. On the other side she’s this empathetic, compassionate female mama-woman that’s so fragile and sensitive.” Here’s what’s emerged over the seasons: Born in 1967, Olivia Benson has a half-brother named Simon Marsden, whom she met much later in life during a rape investigation. Her mother dies early in season two from a drunken fall, having never fully recovered from being raped.
Olivia attended Sienna College and in season one is said to have been with the SVU for a year and a half; her badge number is 44015. Her love life is spotty—mentions of dates or boyfriends are frequent but they have the shelf life of fruit flies. She sleeps with Det. Brian Cassidy in season one but it is clearly a drunken booty call. In truth, the real loves of her life are first, the job and, second, her partner, Det. Elliot Stabler—even if there’s never been any physical evidence of it, and even if it will never be consummated. “He’s her rock, he’s her protector. Olivia has never had anyone to protect her,” says Hargitay. “He’s the one who makes her feel safe and loved and it’s pure. It’s such a deep love, they stay together no matter what. He is her partner and I don’t think she’s in a relationship because no other man measures up to him.”
In season six, the partnership takes precedence over the job, which leads to the two splitting up briefly while Benson goes first into the computer crimes unit, then on an undercover assignment in Oregon. In season eight she meets her half-brother, a New Jersey pharmacist, when he comes under suspicion for multiple rapes, and learns that her father was depressed and an alcoholic (as well as being a rapist). She helps Marsden escape and is later investigated and suspended at the end of season eight, but returns for season nine—during which she reveals that she’d like to have a child, but has been turned down by adoption agencies. Hargitay says that showrunner Neal Baer has told her the next time she gets pregnant in real life they’ll “definitely” write it in. Stay tuned.
The Rest of the Story
Not only did Mariska Hargitay know she wanted the role of Olivia Benson—she was ready to fight for it. When she came back after the initial auditions for what’s known as a “work session” and spotted a beautiful actress in the hallway, Hargitay saw red. “I panicked,” she admits, explaining she strode right into the meeting room and said, “Let me explain something to you: This is my role. So you can tell her—outside—that she is going home now. Because this is my part, and I’m so doing this part.”
Fortunately, it turned out that the actress in the hallway was just meant to be a secondary player in the first episode, but clearly from day one Hargitay was committed to being Benson: “It was a dream that she was complex and compassionate and an empathetic character who wasn’t shoved into a box. Not one dimensional: She’s a cop! Or one dimensional: She’s a doctor! You have to shut down and do your job! It was just such an opportunity to do it differently.”
Early days in New York were a challenge for the California girl, even though she says it was long her dream to live in Manhattan as a stage actress. But that decision meant she had to leave everyone she knew behind, the weather was depressing her, and ultimately she felt her work was suffering. “This was all I ever wanted, and I was miserable,” Hargitay says. “There was a darkness (in me)—I can see it in the photos when I look back at the time.”
What snapped her out of it was twofold. The first season is a challenge on most sets;
SVU
’s season one, for example, saw a purge of many writers and producers, and executive producer Neal Baer stepped in to lead the show in season two. “With Neal I started getting excited about the material, and it was an energy shift and energy change for the show,” recalls Hargitay. “Everything changed when Neal came. He’s a great leader and a great writer.”
The second bit of good fortune was meeting Peter Hermann, who began appearing as a defense attorney midway through season three. “There was this energy between us, charged. And so everyone was a little bit like, ‘What’s with them?’” she recalls.
Reinvested in the show, Hargitay earned SVU’s first lead acting nomination in 2004; outside
SVU
, she was starting to become something of a champion, particularly for survivors of assault and rape. She received emails from survivors and was approached regularly by women who thanked her.

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