After 26 years leading the expansive cast of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Mariska Hargitay can suss out a true star when she sees one.
Appearing on the latest episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, the TV veteran was asked if anyone stood out to her among the countless guests and recurring stars who have appeared on the crime procedural since its 1999 premiere.
Without hesitation, Hargitay interjected, “Abigail Breslin.”
She explained that there were “two people that I went, ‘Holy God.'” In the case of Breslin, who was cast as the victim of a deranged mother’s (Lea Thompson) kidnapping attempt in the season 6 premiere at 7 years old, Hargitay recalled, “She was so young on the show. She kept doing this dance between takes, some kind of dance, and I started doing it with her. It was some kind of nursery rhyme schtick. I don’t know what it was, but I would just do it with her, and then they would say ‘Action,’ and I swear to God, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
NBC
Abigail Breslin on ‘Law & Order: SVU’
Hargitay remembered that the future Academy Award nominee “would turn, one tear, and start lip quivering. No acting. I remember going, ‘What the f‑‑‑, are you like Meryl Streep?'”
When episode director Arthur W. Forney would call cut, Breslin would “go back to her nursery rhyme,” Hargitay said. “I was like, ‘Oh, there’s something, this kid is touched. She is so magical.”
The other standout actor stopped by SVU a full 10 years later, in the season 16 episode “Downloaded Child.”
“Another person that I called it, I remember saying it to her, is Meghann Fahy,” Hargitay revealed. “When she did the show, I was like, ‘Let me tell you something. I’m just gonna tell you right now, you’re gonna be a big movie star. You’re gonna be a huge star.'”
In a canny moment of symmetry, Fahy also starred in a mother-daughter episode, playing a mom so terrified of men and the outside world that she’s accused of neglecting her own child, whom she keeps confined in their apartment.
“I don’t like use that word ‘star’ because what does that even mean?” Hargitay continued. “But I just recognized her (a) talent, (b) light, and (c) she was so sparkly, internally, like an internal sparkle… It’s so exciting to see them go on and go, ‘I called it. I called it!'”
NBC
Meghann Fahy on ‘Law & Order: SVU’
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The core cast of SVU, the first spinoff in the now-legendary Dick Wolf franchise, has long boasted star power with names like Hargitay, Christopher Meloni, Ice-T, and BD Wong.
But the series’ guest and recurring stars have brought additional wattage, from actors such as Connie Nielsen, Peter Gallagher, Marcia Gay Harden, and Pam Grier. SVU has also led to Emmy wins for guest actors like Cynthia Nixon, Ellen Burstyn, and Ann-Margret.
Watch Hargitay’s full Good Hang episode above.
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