Captain Olivia Benson has solved hundreds upon hundreds of heinous crimes over the last 27 seasons of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, making her one of NYPD’s hardest-working and best-looking officers — but all she really wanted to be was Amy Poehler.
Many Law & Order: SVU fans have no idea that series superstar Mariska Hargitay did not, in fact, emerge from Dick Wolf’s split-open skull as a brilliant, fully-formed warrior queen ready to dominate police procedural television in the 21st century. Much like her co-star Christopher Meloni, Hargitay’s public image is defined by her show-stopping, 26-year performance on Law & Order: SVU, but, also like Meloni, Hargitay has some serious comedy chops that go seriously underappreciated by the many millions of Law & Order: SVU fans across the country.
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Case in point: When Hargitay appeared on the most recent episode of Good Hang with Amy Poehler, she hilariously exclaimed of her career, “How did I end up as America’s sweetheart sex cop?” while lamenting how comedy, her first love, has taken a backseat to crime drama since 1999.
When Poehler pointed out that Hargitay first got her start as a performer in the venerated sketch and improv comedy troupe The Groundlings in Los Angeles, Hargitay said that comedy has “always” come first for her, even if locking up pedophiles pays the bills. For as lucrative as the Law & Order franchise may be, Hargitay admitted that she has always been jealous of Poehler’s work on the other side of NBC.
“I should have been you!” Hargitay cried to the Parks and Recreation star.
“Let’s switch! I wanted to be on Law & Order!” Poehler replied. “I wanted to be taken seriously!”
Hargitay asked, “Can we switch for a day? I’m going to try and think about how we can make this happen!”
While Poehler praised Hargitay’s powerful and commanding screen presence, the Law & Order legend insists that, in her real life, she is much closer to an Amy Poehler character than Olivia Benson. When Hargitay was in The Groundlings back in her 20s, she says that she typically tried to audition for sitcoms, saying, “You know, I did Seinfeld, I did Single Guy, I tested for Friends so many times!”
“I always thought that I would end up being on a sitcom or doing comedy, that’s what I thought,” Hargitay said of her earliest career aspirations. Sadly for Hargitay, however, as soon as she booked Law & Order: SVU in 1999, American television audiences would forever see her as a strong, beautiful, no-nonsense detective who handled New York’s most sensitive cases with power and poise.
Perhaps, in another life, Hargitay misses out on the Law & Order role and later lands her own smash-hit Michael Schur mockumentary series, but, with respect to Poehler, I don’t think there’s any universe where Leslie Knope is out there busting the heads of child abusers.
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