Mariska Hargitay is having an epic year.
The actor made her Broadway debut in the one-woman show Every Brilliant Thing this spring. Then in the summer, her beloved New York Knicks won their first NBA title in more than 50 years — she was courtside for their miraculous 29-point comeback in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. This fall, she’s returning for her 28th (!) season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
That’s not all: On Monday, she’ll host the Emmy Awards, becoming the first woman to do so in 15 years. (My Mom Jayne, the HBO documentary she directed about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, won two Creative Arts Emmys, which were handed out Sept. 5-6.)
When it was announced that she would host the Emmys, Hargitay said in a statement that it was a “great honor” for her to “celebrate this extraordinary community of storytellers.”
But in a recent interview with Variety, Hargitay said that when NBC asked, she almost said no.
“At first I thought, ‘This is ridiculously thankless — a difficult job that everyone gets ripped apart for. Why? Why would I do that?'” Hargitay recalled.
She said she then consulted with friends who had hosted awards shows, and they all told her the same thing: “Don’t do it.”
But her love for the medium, combined with a desire for new challenges, led her to go for it.
“I thought about why I love television,” Hargitay said. “Television, in my opinion, is extraordinarily healing.”
She’s working with ex-‘Late Show’ writers
While Hargitay is the first non-comedian to host the Emmys since Angela Lansbury in 1993, she’ll have some help.
In a recent interview with Deadline, Hargitay said that she’s enlisted some of the writers from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which ended earlier this year, to help write her Emmys material.
“We’re at the beginning stages, and so we’re throwing out a lot of different ideas,” she said. “I’m working with an incredible team of writers — the writers from Colbert… We’ve been meeting a lot and discussing a lot and pitching a lot of ideas. We’re pitching so many ideas.”
She revealed one of them.
“I cannot tell you how many people — famous people — ask to be a dead body on the show. It’s a thing,” Hargitay said. “And it is so funny to me that that’s what they want out of all the things … just to be a dead body. It’s on their bucket list. That’s one of the ideas that we were talking about.”
‘I’m a Knick!’
Like several other New York-based stars, Hargitay is a diehard Knicks fan and has been a courtside fixture at their Madison Square Garden home games for years.
“And I’m a Knick!” she exclaimed at one point during her Variety interview.
She has become friends with point guard Jalen Brunson, who calls her “my favorite New York Knicks fan.”
“I’m so grateful for the relationship we have been able to build over the last few years,” Brunson told Variety. “As a lifelong fan of ‘SVU,’ her support means the world to me. I’m truly grateful to have her in my corner.”
Brunson also attended the New York premiere of My Mom Jayne and a performance of Every Brilliant Thing, the Broadway show that Hargitay starred in during the Knicks’ championship run.
Hargitay told Variety that she half-jokingly asked to have the night off to watch the Knicks’ title-clinching Game 5, which was played in San Antonio. She said she watched the second half from home.
“My heart was in two places — I’m not going to lie,” she said.
On the night of Game 4, Hargitay said she shortened her performance so she could make it in time for tip-off.
“I need to be there. I need this for them!” she said. Hargitay sat in the first row next to Taylor Swift and Alana Haim, each of whom wore custom Knicks T-shirts. (Hargitay’s said, “Stevie Knicks.”)
After the team’s improbable 29-point comeback, she was seen on the floor of the Garden with her mouth open, seemingly stunned by what she had just witnessed.
“You’re standing in a miracle,” Hargitay said. “The world was changed. New York was changed. The bar of what’s possible has changed. You can be down 29 points and still win — this is what’s in the consciousness of young athletes now.”
When a reporter asked Brunson what was next for him after his team won the championship, he said, “Try and get onSVU.” Hargitay confirmed that “it’s definitely happening” in a recent interview.
“He’s kind of magnificent that way,” she said. “He is just open and ready. I don’t think there is much Jalen can’t do.”
She’s already a 2026 Emmy winner
On Sept. 5, Hargitay, who won an Emmy in 2006 for her work on Law & Order: SVU, picked up two Creative Arts Emmys (Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special and Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program) for her HBO documentary, My Mom Jayne.
The film is about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, who died in a car accident outside New Orleans in 1967. Hargitay and her two older brothers, Zoltán and Miklos, were in the back seat of the vehicle but survived.
In interviews, she has described the documentary as “an archaeological dig” about the generational trauma her family experienced.
“I had no idea how it would be received, so it’s been extraordinary to see how it’s resonated with people,” Hargitay said recently on NBC’sTodayshow. “And that has been the biggest gift of all.”
