Law & Order: SVU Stars Tried To Troll The Show's Shippers, But It Never Happened
"Law & Order: SVU" could have featured a TV kiss for the ages between Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March). The ship, known as "Cabenson," was even supported by Hargitay and March.
In 2018, March told Marie Claire, "At one point, we found out that some fans wanted Benson and Cabot to hook up. We loved it! We started begging the writers for a scene that made it look like we were going to kiss. They were having none of it."
"Cabenson" gained significant traction online among the "SVU" fandom over the years. In fact, there are over 1,000 entries written about the pair on the popular fan-fiction website Archive of Our Own. "Cabenson ftw," a user commented in a Reddit thread about Benson and Cabot. "I think they had great chemistry in the earlier seasons, for sure. I wish SVU would have gone down that road with them." Unfortunately, Cabot never became one of Benson's love interests in "SVU."
Olivia Benson and Alex Cabot almost kissed in Law & Order: SVU
Stephanie March later revealed in a 2019 GQ interview that Benson and Cabot came close to locking lips during filming. "Mariska and I always joke that we were trying to get a kiss on-screen to see what would happen," she shared. "Let's break the internet! The last time we shot, at the end of the take, we moved in for a kiss and they were like, 'Cut, cut, cut.' We were just trying to mess with the editors."
But a deleted "Cabenson" kiss actually exists. In a 2021 episode of the "But I Played One on TV" podcast (19:20), March described the moment she and Hargitay veered off script while shooting Season 19.
"The last time I went back to shoot 'SVU,' which must have been three years ago, Mariska and I were shooting ... downtown," she recalled. "It was late at night, and it was the last scene. ... Just for the hell of it, she said, 'Do you want to kiss and just see if the writers will use it?' So, we did. We said goodbye and we kissed each other, and we asked them to roll the tape back and let us see, and they said: 'Okay, just this once but we're basically deleting the whole thing after this.' But we did manage to put one down."