Mariska Hargitay Met Up with Legend, Gloria Steinem — Who Once Visited the SVU Set
The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit snapped a selfie with the renowned feminist activist.
irl power alert!
On September 9, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star Mariska Hargitay posted a badass selfie with renowned journalist and fellow women’s rights activist, Gloria Steinem. In the picture, Hargitay held up the camera as the two sat next to each other on a couch smiling.
“Sisterhood is powerful #GloriousGloria,” Hargitay cleverly captioned the post.
Gloria Steinem once visited the SVU set
Hargitay and Steinem have apparently connected on the SVU set before, according to actress Lindsay Kraft, who was in a Season 4 and a Season 12 episode of the show, and also noted Hargitay’s kind nature while on set.
“I’ll never forget that whilst filming a terrific episode of #lawordersvu gloria was sitting in video village. i nearly fainted. never said hello. regrets. and @therealmariskahargitay you were just the warmest to me. and i thank you,” Kraft commented on the post.
Hargitay has been a long admirer of Steinem’s. In a 2018 interview with InStyle, the actress opened up about how Steinem has influenced her dedication to standing up for sexual assault survivors.
“I will always look up to the heroes in this movement, like Gloria Steinem. This has a truly awe-inspiring display of strength in numbers — and strength of collective outrage has brought about this hard-won time of change,” she said.
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This isn’t the only exciting meetup Hargitay has had lately. On August 30, she also posted a selfie with actress Jamie Lee Curtis.
“Fierce female friendship alert. Love this lady,” Hargitay captioned the post before referring to Curtis as a “sister from another mister.”
Mariska Hargitay’s activism work
Hargitay and Steinem have a lot in common, as Hargitay is also very active in the social justice sphere. She is the founder of The Joyful Heart Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping sexual and domestic abuse survivors. In an interview with Access, Harigtay opened up about how her SVU role as Olivia Benson has opened her eyes to injustices and helped channel her empathetic nature.
“When I started SVU, very quickly, I started to receive a different kind of fan letter. Instead of, you know, ‘I love your show, you’re a great actress,’ it was women and men disclosing stories of abuse,” Hargitay revealed to the outlet. “People started sharing and saying, ‘Your show changed my life,’ and ‘I’ve never told anyone [about my abuse].’ That is the sentence I heard most: ‘I’ve never told anyone.’”
She added, “There’s nothing about this to keep secret. This is something we should all be talking about. I knew very early that this wasn’t a regular TV show. I understood very quickly the power of healing this television show had.”
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In 2021, her co-star Chris Meloni gave a speech about Hargitay’s compassion when she was given a Glamour Woman of the Year Award.
“She’s fearless, without the bravado of the warrior stance, but always with the open arms, the open heart. She’s a connector of people because she knows we’re all better when we’re working together. She is as comfortable in the sacred as she is in the profane; she is a soul in the constant search of the beauty and the truth that she knows that this world holds, but she also knows requires vigilance, persistence, and insistence to pry magic from the oftentimes mundane reality. Her first instance is to always react with compassion and empathy. She sees hope in the hopeless; she sees the potential in the you, and me, and us,” he said.
