'Law & Order: SVU' Poster Celebrates Historic Season: '20 Years Strong'

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is celebrating its historic new season with a poster that boasts [...]

By Stephen Andrew

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is celebrating its historic new season with a poster that boasts it is "20 Years Strong."

The tagline is a reference to the fact that show is beginning its 20th season on Thursday, Sept. 27. First airing in 1999, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is tied with Gunsmoke and the first Law & Order as the longest-running scripted live-action American primetime series.

The show currently has no obvious end in sight, so it will very likely end up being the lone holder of the record in the near future.

NBC chairman Robert Greenblatt recently confirmed that the show has no planned ending, saying that the network will keep the show around as long as Mariska Hargitay wants to keep doing it.

"I'm still processing it because it's a lifetime of processing," Hargitay previously told E! News about the show's historical 20th season. "I'm just so full of gratitude and so excited that I get to do what I love to do every day."

"When you're just in it, it's hard to fully take it in," the actress added. "So I'm just grateful for this role, for this part, for [Dick Wolf's] vision and that I've gotten to mine a character for so long that is still deeply challenging to me and inspiring to me and necessary and timely, and I think truly changing the culture."

While the show has mostly followed an unwavering formula for most of its run, season 19 did feature an intense episode that spent most of the time depicting an interview between Hargitay's Lt. Olivia Benson, and Melora Walters' Laurel Linwood, an alleged rape victim.

Over the course of the conversation, many revelations take place regarding the facts of the case, and Hargitay says those scenes "wrecked" her "for about three more days".

"It was hard for me to switch gears into the next episode," Hargitay told E! News. "I wasn't quite present — definitely not the first day, you know what I mean? My body, my mind and my soul didn't have time to recuperate from it."

Fans can catch up on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit by watching all the past seasons on Hulu before season 20 debuts in September.

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