Mariska Hargitay is hopeful to reunite with Law & Order: SVU costar Chris Meloni in the future after the cancellation of the Organized Crime spinoff.
“I love Chris and I love acting with Chris, so I’m always open to working with him and getting Benson and Stabler together,” the actress, 62, said in an interview with Deadline published on Wednesday, April 22. “They’re happiest when they’re together.”
Hargitay “hopes” that Meloni, 65, could return to SVU at some point to bring the detective dream team back together.
“That is a very heartening thing for both of us, that our relationship was so iconic culturally and that Benson and Stabler still resonates is deeply meaningful to me,” she told the outlet. “Chris and I, I’m sure you know, are very, very close. He’s a very in-demand actor, so we’ll see if the schedule is lined up.”
Meloni is starring in the upcoming Dan Fogleman series The Land alongside Mandy Moore, William H. Macy and Chace Crawford. The series, which has begun filming, is expected to premiere on Hulu sometime this year.
Hargitay and Meloni connected in 1999 when SVU premiered. While the show followed the pair’s characters, Olivia Benson (Hargitay) and Elliot Stabler (Meloni), as they investigate and prosecute sex-based crimes, die-hard fans hoped to see them fall in love over time — which ultimately did not happen.
Following season 12, which aired in 2011, Meloni announced his departure from the series. Meloni revealed that a pay dispute impacted his decision to leave.
“I left with zero animosity, but I did leave clearly and open-eyed in going forward and finding new adventures. I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do, keep moving forward,’” Meloni told The New York Post in July 2021. “I had done the Law & Order way of storytelling, which they do really well, and I was interested in telling stories from a different angle — whether comedic or inhabiting a new world or doing it on different platforms.”
Nearly a decade later, Meloni returned to the SVU universe with its Organized Crime spinoff. The series, which premiered in 2021, had Meloni reprising his role as a retired detective returning to the force after his wife’s murder.
“It felt good to have to make that decision — which was a big yes-or-no decision — with a sense of clarity and a sense of certain things being correct,” Meloni told Men’s Health in 2021 of his highly anticipated return.
Organized Crime ran for five seasons. With Meloni reprising his character, he and Hargitay were able to reunite on screen for multiple crossover appearances.
However, NBC confirmed earlier this month that the show had been canceled.
