Mariska Hargitay, in accepting her Anniversary Tribute honor at Tuesday’s inaugural Gotham TV Awards, centered on the distinctive mission of Legislation & Order: Particular Victims Unit.
The star has appeared in 550 episodes over 25 seasons of the collection (greater than another scripted TV actor), however she appeared to take nothing as a right onstage.
“The largest factor for me to soak up proper now’s that I get to work day by day on a present that makes folks really feel much less alone,” she stated in a heartfelt speech on the gala held at New York’s Cipriani 25 Broadway. “That’s one of the devastating results on sexual assault and home violence is the isolation. Perpetrators rely on precise, literal isolation to commit their crimes and to go away victims with the trauma of deep, psychological isolation.”
Hargitay has appeared for 25 years as Olivia Benson on the present, for 550 episodes, a report for a scripted TV present. “That may be a excessive bar, folks!” she quipped. “After 20, you’re like, ‘Twenty years?! Who provides a s–t? Legislation & Order did that. Gunsmoke did that. Name us whenever you get to 25.’ Nicely, right here I’m, child!”
Whereas there have been just a few high-spirited asides, Hargitay largely centered her feedback on the core objective of the Dick Wolf-produced drama. “I can’t let you know how gratifying it’s, how vital it’s, that Legislation & Order: SVU, the longest-running scripted drama in tv historical past, is a present that tells ladies’s tales,” she stated. “It’s a present that tells survivors tales. It tells the tales of survivors all alongside the spectrum of gender id.”
Of her character, Hargitay stated, “I really like that she’s equal components outrage and compassion and power and vulnerability.”
Returning to the subject of the survivors foregrounded by the present, Hargitay stated its “reply to the survivors is the precise reverse” of isolation. “You matter. Your story issues. And we’re going to inform it.” the present’s goal is “shifting these diff matters out of the darkness and into the sunshine and into dialog and to put the place we are able to make it a spot the place folks can heal.”
NBC renewed SVU for a twenty sixth season final March. Hargitay obtained plenty of tributes after hitting the quarter-century mark, together with having Rockefeller Plaza quickly renamed Olivia Benson Plaza.