After filming 600 episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, it’s safe to say that star Mariska Hargitay has worked hard for her money.
Hargitay’s character, Detective Olivia Benson, is now Captain of the Special Victims Unit and she’s been top of the call sheet for more than a decade. That accolade and her role as an executive producer means Hargitay now takes home nearly $850,000 per episode, according to Variety.
The actress, 62, has been part of the hit NBC series since its 1999 premiere, making her debut alongside police partner Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni).
Once Meloni, 65, exited the series as a regular in 2011 after 12 seasons, the drama became Hargitay’s show to lead and lead she did.
The star has also used her voice outside the series to create the Joyful Heart Foundation, to help change the narrative around sexual assault, something her character would be proud of.
Hargitay’s latest milestone on SVU comes with the 600th episode, airing Thursday, November 12.
“It’s about a woman having her voice and being submissive or subservient in a way, or giving up our power or our instinct, and that’s an important story to tell,” she told Variety about the story line, confirming it will focus on Benson’s personal life even more than usual. “Because so many women identify with that.”
The episode will also feature Meloni as a guest star, which will once again have fans asking why the former partners never became a romantic couple?
“Every relationship is fraught. Every relationship has power dynamics, and will they/won’t they, and what could have been and what isn’t and why, and could they and can’t they, and the complexity of all that,” Hargitay teased of Benson and Stabler’s “intense history” that continued to inform their working relationship.
Ahead of the episode’s premiere, Hargitay reunited with her longtime friend Meloni as well as SVU creator Dick Wolf, Wolf Entertainment chief operating officer Peter Jankowski and the current cast and crew to celebrate their accomplishment.
“It was one of the most extraordinary, meaningful nights, and unexpectedly so to me,” Hargitay recalled of the event. “Dick got up and said, ‘This has never happened, and it will never happen again.’ And everything just landed that night.”
Hargitay also gave a speech that night, toasting to 600 episodes that she said “doesn’t feel totally real — which in a way is exactly how it should feel, because it’s as if we all get to live in this dream of what you thought might be possible someday. And you’ve shown that it’s not only possible, but it’s so much better than anyone could have imagined.”
According to Variety, Hargitay also praised Wolf, 79, and his “television” with the series, saying, “You truly have television — the kind of vision that lets you see and dream and believe far enough and wide enough to create some of this.”
She added, “All those years ago, when you sat there with this idea for the show, and you said, ‘Huh, this might work,’ you used your television, your foresight, to look many years in the future.”
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit airs on NBC Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET.
