Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni Weigh in on If Benson and Stabler Will Ever Be a Couple
Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni are giving hope to every Law & Order: Special Victims Unit fan who ships their characters, Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler. In a new interview with PEOPLE, Hargitay and Meloni open up about their Benson and Stabler's relationship trajectory now that Meloni has returned to the franchise with Law & Order: Organized Crime.
The former partners and longtime friends may have reconnected following the murder of Stabler's wife, but Hargitay told the magazine the show is "taking it one step at a time" when it comes to their relationship's evolution. "It's such a complicated relationship that I think we just want to respect the complexity and the nuance of it," she explained.
"These two people love each other, they have been family to each other but he just lost his wife and no matter how she feels about him, the most important thing for him is to grieve his wife, heal from that," the Golden Globe winner continued. "And he's in a new job and he's sort of unbalanced ... But what we do know is that Olivia loves him, will always love him, will always be there and they have a bond like no other."
Thinking into a hypothetical future first date for the pair, Hargitay said it would have to be "really easygoing," as their characters "couldn't handle a lot of pressure." She reasoned, "It's a lot of pressure. I don't even know the answer to that. It makes me nervous just thinking about it," adding, "Let's just go out to dinner, let's start there."
Meloni also sees a future ahead for his and Hargitay's character, telling the magazine, "In the future, I don't not see it." He continued, "That might be very satisfying for a lot of people, I'll leave it at that." There's work to be done for both of their characters now that Stabler is back in New York. "I just think that it really has to be a natural aspect of Elliot's back and in town and especially how he left and their radio silence over all these years, you have to answer these questions and figure out how they inhabit the same space," he said.