There’s one role all the biggest stars want to portray on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, according to star and executive producer Mariska Hargitay.
The actress made an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers ahead of the SVU season 26 premiere on Thursday. While speaking with the host, she revealed that A-listers who want to guest star on the long-running show all want to play dead.
“All the famous people, you know what they want? To be a dead body,” she told Seth Meyers. “It’s so weird.”
Hargitay recalled she recently spoke to a “big supermodel,” who she wouldn’t name but noted she was “one of the greats,” who wanted to only portray a dead person, despite the SVU writers having a more elaborate role for her.
“I found out that she loved my show. So I said, ‘Oh my gosh,’ I went to the writers, I said, ‘Can she be on the show?’ And she said she wanted to be a dead body, but then I said, ‘No, no, we have this great part for you,’” the ER actress said. “I call her back, I said, ‘Listen we got it. We’re gonna get you on the show.’ She goes, ‘Oh no, I wanna be a dead body.’”
Admittedly, the late night host was also one of those people who only wanted to play dead.
“I wanted to be a dead body. During the 2007-2008 writers strike, I met all these Law & Order writers, and I was like, ‘I wanna do a cameo, but I just wanna be a dead body,’” Meyers recalled. “And they were like, ‘Oh my God, we’d love to have you on the show.’ But I was like, ‘OK, but I’m a dead person.’”
Despite eventually being offered a role, he turned it down because he “was like, ‘I don’t want lines, I just wanna be a dead person in the park.’”
Elsewhere in the late night appearance, Hargitay shared that there’s one thing she’s really wanted to do in an episode of the Dick Wolf show, but the writers won’t let her: Be drunk.
“I don’t know who I have to call to get a drunk gig ’cause I’m so good at it, and I beg, I beg,” she said. “I mean, like, I’m America’s sweetheart, I thought. I beg them to write me a drunk scene. They won’t.”
She joked, instead, she has to go to bars and not drink but pretend to be drunk, hoping there’s a producer there that will cast her in a role where she can portray a drunk person.
Law & Orders: SVU season 26 premieres on NBC tonight and will air subsequent episodes on Thursdays, dropping next-day on Peacock.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
