Mariska Hargitay Reveals She Wanted to Do Sitcoms Before Landing ‘Law & Order: SVU’

Before she was Olivia Benson, Mariska Hargitay was setting her sights on sitcoms instead of drama.

The Emmy-winning actress told Amy Poehler on her Good Hang podcast that she pursued comedy early in her career before eventually landing Law & Order: SVU.

“I did a lot of comedy auditions,” Hargitay said via The Daily Beast. “I did Seinfeld and I did Single Guy, and I tested for Friends, so many times.” She thinks she auditioned for Monica, which eventually went to Courteney Cox.

“I always thought I would end up being on a sitcom or doing comedy,” Hargitay continued. “I was like, ‘I want to do drama but it has to be funny,’ because that’s what I felt like my gifts were.” She also admitted she would tell people, “‘I’m going to be a comedian because I’m funny and I’m pretty.’”

Not only did she want to do more comedy and auditioned for sitcoms, but she studied improv with the Groundlings comedy troupe, which a lot of SNL alumni come from. She was a “struggling actor” in Los Angeles and didn’t know what to do. “I came to New York, which I did three times a year to see theater,” Hargitay explained. “And then I met with this psychic. Everyone said to me, ‘Oh my gosh, Mariska, you have to meet with this psychic. He’s amazing.’ I drove out somewhere on Long Island to this man, and I went there and he started saying all this amazing stuff to me.”

“I was listening to him really intently like this,” she continued. “He said to me, ‘You see that face you’re doing right now? You see that face?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘You’re going to be famous for that face. You’re moving to New York and you’re gonna be famous for that face.’”

Despite the psychic’s words, Hargitay was determined to make it big in the comedy world. “I said, ‘Uh, no.’ I live in L.A. and I’m going to be a comedian,’” she recalled. Only, just six months later, “swear to God… I got SVU.”

It’s hard to imagine how different things would have been had Hargitay wound up doing sitcoms and not dramas, but it’s likely SVU would not be what it is without Hargitay as Olivia Benson. Some things just work out in the end, even if it’s not the way you planned.