Mariska, Mariska, Mariska
Hello, Gorgeous! from Mariska Hargitay herself + being bold at any age
Hello, Gorgeous!
That’s how I’ve greeted all of you for the past two years; as it turns out, Hello, Gorgeous! was also part of an extremely silly volley in increasingly unrecognizable accents that I exchanged with Mariska Hargitay earlier this week.
In case you’ve been living under a giant rock for the past few decades, Mariska has starred as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU for 27 years, with season 28 coming soon. She’s actual Hollywood royalty, as the daughter of one of the original blonde bombshells, Jayne Mansfield, and bodybuilding champ Mickey Hargitay. Mariska’s documentary about her mother, “My Mom Jayne,” came out last year and is available to stream on HBO Max. And at 62, Mariska made her Broadway debut in a one-woman show, Every Brilliant Thing.
While the reason for the meeting was to discuss her new campaign with Bristol Myers Squibb, Investigating Myeloma — which honors her father, Mickey, who died of multiple myeloma twenty years ago — I was also able to ask her a few questions specifically for Hello Gorgeous! readers. (You can read my full interview with her on Yahoo).
Incidentally, I’m going to be referring to her as Mariska in this piece, not because we’re besties (that seems reserved for Taylor Swift, with whom she shared a hugfest during Wednesday’s miracle Knicks comeback) but because I mention her father as well, and don’t want to keep going back and forth between Hargitays.
Back to the meeting.
I don’t usually tell people when I’m meeting or interviewing someone famous or fancy in advance. Things go wrong, people cancel, or it seems odd to mention what’s effectively just another part of my work. But for some reason I was actually nervous about meeting Mariska, and I told a few people. The reactions cemented my sense of the fandom of all things Mariska. One friend admitted to a decades-long crush. A cousin shared her SVU obsession. A colleague planned a return trip to NYC to see Mariska on Broadway in the same play she’d seen just weeks earlier. The collective crush was real. And that’s not to mention those of you who emailed me with your questions for her.
The game
Shortly after we met, Mariska asked what outlet I was writing for, and we segued to my book, Hello Gorgeous! Beauty Products in America ‘40s–’60s, which covers the very era her mother reigned over. Telling Jayne Mansfield’s daughter that her mother’s world inspired your first book is its own kind of full-circle moment. Telling her your newsletter shares the name is apparently an open invitation to spontaneous silliness.
A few minutes later, Mariska looked at me with a perfectly straight face and said “Hello Gorgeous!” in an accent I couldn’t begin to place. I returned the volley with a tragic attempt at a British accent. She lit up and sent it back in another accent entirely. Then another. I’d like to tell you I held my own as the child of two Eastern Europeans with significant accents, but I was playing accent tennis with a woman who’s been doing this professionally since before some of you had email addresses. I'd also like to think we bonded as two daughters of Hungarian fathers — but that part of the story belongs to the Yahoo piece. Incidentally, that became a running bit — whenever the conversation became too heavy or needed a reset, one of us (usually her) would serve up another round.
Feel the fear
I asked Mariska a question some of you had wondered about: how she manages to be so incredibly bold — the gift she gave herself of that beautiful documentary, and now being on freaking Broadway in a one-woman show. What do you even do with that? (Yes. That last part was verbatim).
“My dad taught me to challenge myself,” she told me. “My goal in life is to be all of myself. Again, this is about integration. This is about being all of myself.”
“My dad always told me I could do anything. So as I get older, I like to feel the fear and do it anyway. And I was terrified about this Broadway thing. I’d never done it before. These are completely different muscles.”
About the play arriving in her life when it did: “The play came to me at this time. Because it’s not an accident. You’ll see.”
“It was like, not only reclaiming my story, but reclaiming excised parts of myself, and I want, like all of us do, to be whole.”
~Mariska Hargitay
And then she gave me homework. “Have you seen it yet? Just come. Just make it happen. It’s an extraordinary play.” Reader, when Mariska Hargitay instructs you to come to her Broadway show, you start checking dates. (Every Brilliant Thing runs at the Hudson Theatre through July 5, if you’d like to receive the same assignment).
In case you're wondering: she really is gorgeous. I'm not talking about Hollywood's version of perfection either. I'm talking about presence that lit up a room and a smile that could probably be seen from space. And interestingly enough, when Mariska strode into the space asking if she had spinach in her teeth (she did not), she was in full Carole Lombard mode — stunning, screwball-lite, owning the space. Also, she smelled delicious — a subtle, this-is-probably-bespoke scent you can only catch if you're within inches of her glorious presence.
Reclaiming all of it
Here’s the part I most wanted to bring back to you. When Mariska talked about making “My Mom Jayne,” she talked about wholeness in a way that sounded less like celebrity press and more like every conversation I’ve ever had with the women who read this newsletter.
“The goal, right, to be a human being is to step into our true authenticity,” she said. “We are such complex beings, with so many parts, that all need attention... it was a time of integration. And realizing that we are so many things, and we don’t have to stay in one part or one self or one thing, but we can be all of ourselves.”
And this: “We feel these feelings, and we have this insecurity or fear... not feeling like enough or feeling less than. I think a lot of women feel that way. A lot of humans feel that way... This was about reclamation for me. It was like, not only reclaiming my story, but reclaiming excised parts of myself, and I want, like all of us do, to be whole.”
A woman who made the most revealing work of her life in her sixties, then walked onto a Broadway stage terrified and did it anyway. Reclamation has no expiration date.
She left me with one more line, and I’m leaving it with you, because it might be the most Hello Gorgeous! sentence ever spoken: “Nobody decides what you are. You decide. You decide.”
So this week, whatever the bold thing is — the one you’ve been circling, the one that requires completely different muscles — feel the fear and do it anyway.
Hello, Gorgeous! Right back at you.
So what bold thing would you like to tackle next? I’d love to finally finish my mystery series!
Let’s meet in the comment section to discuss.
Incidentally, yes. I do have a pic with her. But I decided to share the ones I took of her instead.
Rachel, your beauty concierge 💋
Love this for you so much!
The best thing to hit my inbox today- this woman RAISED ME
Love this piece!