Mariska Hargitay Prepares Fans for Another ‘Law & Order SVU’ Reunion With Chris Meloni
Law & Order SVU star Mariska Hargitay reunited with her partner Chris Meloni not too long ago. But she recently hinted that it might not be the last fans have seen of the pair.
Mariska Hargitay has been talking about another ‘SVU’ reunion with Chris Meloni
Hargitay has been just as excited to see Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler back on screen together as some fans. Meloni hasn’t been seen on SVU since the show’s 22nd season a couple of years ago. Since then, there have been references every now and then in regards to Stabler on SVU. But the pair have yet to reunite.
In a recent interview with Variety, Hargitay explained that she’s been communicating with Meloni personally about a reunion. It seems likely that it’ll happen eventually. But if it was up to Hargitay, the pairing would happen sooner than later.
“I’m actually planning on it,” she said. “I just told him the other day. We had a party the other night, we saw each other. It was heavenly. I met his showrunner. They want us together, and Chris and I were talking about it, and it’s time. It’s time now for us. This was a long time not being in each other’s universe. That’s why we did the calls and stuff like that. But we’re excited to get back in there, get back in the ring.”
The last time they were together, Olivia Benson and Stabler nearly took their relationship a step further. They almost kissed each other before changing their minds at the last second. Hargitay and Meloni both agreed their characters should’ve gone all the way, but they were overruled by show creator Dick Wolf.
“To be honest with you, Chris and I thought it should go one way and the powers that be didn’t, so it got changed at the last minute, that near kiss,” Hargitay said. “Obviously Dick gets final say. It’s his show and he didn’t want that.”
Why Chris Meloni hasn’t reunited with Mariska Hargitay on ‘SVU’ yet
It’s been a couple of years since Meloni last appeared on SVU. Since then, both he and his character have been very busy with their duties in Organized Crime. Current SVU showrunners and writers David Graziano and Julie Martin would’ve also liked to see Meloni cross over into SVU by now. But they confided that the reunion wouldn’t be all that simple.
“That’s something we hotly debate back and forth here every day, and some of the considerations about Benson and Stabler have nothing to do with narrative and they’re about just logistics of these two actors busy schedules,” Graziano once told Today. “You’ve got to think for a second about the OC: Chris Meloni is in every single scene of that show, and they just can’t lend him out the same way we can sort of give them Mariska for a day or two. Even when we give her over there for a day or two, we feel hobbled without her.”
But it seems clear that when Benson and Stabler are reunited, they won’t immediately be getting together.
“We have a responsibility to Benson as a character, too. There have been a lot of events that have happened in the OC and also on our show, SVU, that would seem to preclude an easy relationship with the two of them,” Graziano said. “And so I think there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be unpacked first. Like, I think one of the fans wrote me about this, and I said something to the effect of like I think true love prevails in the end. I’m a firm believer in true love prevailing dramatically if not in real life. But before you can have a healthy relationship like that, if you have some monsters under your bed, you have to slay those first. Otherwise, they’re going to follow you into that relationship.”
