Mariska Hargitay Tears Up Over Robin Williams' SVU Cameo: "He Made All of Us Feel..."
The SVU icon looks back on one of the most memorable guest stars ever in the show's history.
Mariska Hargitay remembers the late, great Robin Williams fondly.
During a May 2024 Vanity Fair video segment in which the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star re-watched scenes from the show, she sweetly recalled working with Robin Williams in a Season 9 episode titled "Authority."
Williams played a sinister audio engineer named Merritt Rook in the episode, who used his skills to do police officer impersonations, make weapons, and worse. Hargitay still marvels at the fact she got to work with such a singular talent.
"To watch somebody in utter flow, to watch flow happening — that which is invisible, and he was the personification of — it was magnificent," Hargitay said, adding that every take was "different every time, funny every time, and truthful and believable."
Williams earned an Emmy nomination for his work on the episode.
"What is happening? How am I so lucky that I get to witness it?" Hargitay recalled thinking on set. "It was magic. Everything was electric with him. There was no line between sort of acting and who he was as a person. [He was] the most fun person and the most generous, and it was pure joy, and he made all of us feel so special."
Williams didn't just make a mark on Hargitay and the rest of the SVU family. He also bonded with Hargitay's then-baby son, August.
"I remember my son was 2 or 3 and Robin grabbed him and picked him up and was so kind and doing voices for him," she said while holding back tears. "And you're just in this moment going, 'I'm pinching myself that I get to live in the same time with somebody so magnetic, and so magic, and so generous…' because we got to breathe the same oxygen. It was pretty great."
Mariska Hargitay reveals the SVU episode that was "the most difficult" to film
During a 2013 TODAY appearance, Hargitay revealed that one SVU episode sticks out in her mind as the trickiest to shoot: the Season 15 premiere, "Surrender Benson," which featured a harrowing scene involving Olivia Benson being held at gunpoint.
"It was, without a doubt, the most difficult episode I ever shot in 15 years, and it was unlike anything I've ever done," Hargitay said. "I have to tell you, after 15 years, to be nervous and scared and excited to go to work — it's a pretty great thing. When you're acting, your body doesn't know the difference [between] acting or being in reality, and that's what presented the challenge."
Shop SVU merch!
