Mariska Hargitay Says She’s ‘Definitely a Victim of Secondary Trauma’ from Starring in ‘Law and Order: SVU’

"When I started the show, I wasn’t aware of how deeply it would go into me."

Mariska Hargitay‘s 25 years on “Law and Order: SVU” has impacted her own psyche.

The actress/producer told Selena Gomez for Interview magazine that bringing her character Olivia Benson to life for more than two decades has taken its toll on her personal life. She has played the character for more than 550 episodes of the “Law and Order” spinoff series, which is the longest-running primetime drama series of all-time.

“That’s been a process. When I started the show, I wasn’t aware of how deeply it would go into me,” Hargitay said. “My husband Peter [Hermann, who also has guest starred on the series] is always like, anytime I go anywhere, my first question is, ‘What’s the crime rate here?’ So it’s on the brain.”

She continued, “There’s been times when I didn’t know how to protect myself, and I think I was definitely a victim of secondary trauma from being inundated with these stories and knowing that they were true. Those were the parts that I didn’t know how to metabolize, just because of the sheer volume of it. That’s also why I started Joyful Heart [Foundation], so I would feel like, well, at least I’m doing something about it.”

Hargitay, who was honored at the inaugural 2024 Gotham TV Awards, founnded the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004. The nonprofit organization supports survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse. It has launched numerous programs since its founding, including the End the Backlog initiative, which works to reduce the backlog of untested rape kits. Hargitay is also a certified rape crisis counselor. 

“I learned more about sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, than I ever had thought about,” Hargitay said of leading “SVU.” “And quite frankly, before I started the show, I didn’t know a lot about it.”

The star continued that she “thought the show was so progressive” for being “willing to take on this subject matter.”

“During the first year, Dick Wolf got an award from the [Mt. Sinai] Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program, and it was actually that night that I learned the statistics of sexual assault. I learned that one in three women will be assaulted, and one in six men. That’s what started the foundation for me,” she said. “That’s when I started going, ‘I have to do something,’ because the show was obviously tackling the subject matter, but when I learned the statistics, I said, ‘Why isn’t everyone talking about this?’ And if I didn’t know, I figured nobody knows what an epidemic violence against women is.”

Hargitay added that the long-running series has “surpassed my wildest dreams in terms of a career, but also in terms of personal fulfillment — that I could marry my acting with my philanthropy or with a personal mission to have a part in people’s healing. I think about that often.”