Every Time Mariska Hargitay Played Olivia Benson Outside Of Law & Order: SVU

The following article includes discussion of sexual assault and suicide.

Mariska Hargitay's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" character, Captain Olivia Benson, is one of the most prolific characters currently starring on a television show. With the debut of Season 28 of "SVU" on October 8, 2026, Hargitay has played Olivia for nearly three decades on TV — an amazing feat in the entertainment industry. 

It's also quite an honor to play a beloved character on shows outside of the one that people know you for. This happens on spinoffs quite often, especially if a franchise has more than one show airing new episodes on any given year, but it's not often that a character crosses into another franchise altogether. Nevertheless, thanks to TV titan Dick Wolf, Olivia Benson has done just that. Factor in that NBC airs one of the most iconic sketch comedy shows on TV and also hosted one of the industry's biggest nights in 2026, and that's a lot of chances for Captain Benson to steal the spotlight beyond the confines of "SVU." 

Mariska Hargitay and Olivia Benson first stepped out of the "SVU" offices to appear on "Law & Order" in 2000, when the show was airing its 10th season. This wouldn't be the last time, though: Hargitay appeared in eight episodes of "Law & Order" between 2000 and 2026. 

The first crossover episode, "Entitled (Part 1)," begins on "SVU," when a salesman is found dead in a car in the middle of a park and it's determined that he was murdered. Benson and her partner, Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), call on the 27th Precinct over on "Law & Order" Season 10, Episode 14, "Entitled (Part 2)" in which the main suspect becomes Stephanie Mulroney (Noelle Beck), the daughter in a wealthy and politically connected family whose mother, Regina (Jane Alexander), will go to extreme lengths to protect her.

One of Olivia's most memorable crossover cases with "Law & Order" starts when she guides a suicidal pregnant woman named April Troost (Estella Warren) off a ledge in "SVU" Season 7, Episode 2, "Design." April says she was raped by a man named Barclay Pallister (Julian Sands) and DNA evidence appears to prove it. Yet it's slowly revealed that April is a con artist who drugs rich men, accuses them of attacking her, then extorts them for money. Her parents are conspirators, and, when the 27th Precinct's detectives discover that one of their victims was trying to call Olivia before he was murdered, she's brought into a money laundering scheme investigation involving April and her family. This takes place on "Law & Order" Season 16, Episode 2, "Flaw."

"Law & Order: Trial by Jury" had a strong lead in Bebe Neuwirth, who played assistant district attorney Tracey Kibre on the one and only season of the show. Yes, "Trial By Jury" was the first "Law & Order" show to be canceled. Still, despite its short life, the show boasted impressive guest stars and even got a star-studded crossover episode with Olivia Benson and her crew. "Trial by Jury" is not available to stream, but "SVU" had the first episode in the crossover, Season 6 Episode 20, "Night," which was followed immediately by "Trial by Jury" Season 1 Episode 11, "Day."

In "Night," a woman is found raped and murdered near a nightclub with hundred-dollar bills stuffed into her mouth. Benson and Stabler discover that the victim was a bathroom attendant at the club and an undocumented immigrant. The fingerprints on the bills lead to Jason Whitaker (Bradley Cooper), a defense attorney who exclusively works for the wealthy Duvall family, connecting their matriarch, Eleanor Duvall (Angela Lansbury), and her son, Gabriel Duvall (Alfred Molina), to the case.

An activist, Mildred Quintana (Rita Moreno) helps SVU detectives determine that the perpetrator is targeting undocumented women. Mildred helps Benson and Stabler connect with another victim, Nina Zergin (Anya Migdal), a Bosnian immigrant who accuses Gabriel of rape and eventually works with police. But she's petrified of her brother, Milan (Stelio Savante), because a woman losing virginity before marriage brings shame to a family, even when she's raped. Milan eventually attacks ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), leading to the crossover. At the end of "Day," Gabriel is prosecuted by a jury. 

Christopher Meloni left "SVU" in 2011 after Season 12, but his own franchise spinoff, "Law & Order: Organized Crime," premiered a decade later in April 2021. Elliot Stabler continues investigating his wife's murder with the Organized Crime Unit in the first episode, "What Happens in Puglia," and Mariska Hargitay appears as Olivia Benson in that episode and 13 others across four seasons of the show. 

In the early seasons of "Organized Crime," Olivia is mostly involved in Elliot's personal life. For example, his daughter, Kathleen (Allison Siko), asks her to help with a family intervention about Elliot's PTSD in Season 1, Episode 4, "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of." And Elliot calls Olivia when his son, Eli (Nicky Torchia), goes missing in Season 2, Episode 9, "The Christmas Episode." 

Stabler and Benson also work together on a big case in "Organized Crime" Season 3 and "SVU" Season 24, when an SVU rape case turns up DNA that's connected to an OCCB murder; it's eventually discovered that both crimes were commissioned through a dark web operation called Shadowërk, a site that allows people to hire others to commit violent revenge crimes. Their quest to reveal the operator behind the site takes them to Ohio, where hits are put out on their lives and Olivia is shot. This frightens Stabler and leads to a very intense Bensler moment, as he thinks Olivia's injury is more serious than it is. Olivia returns the favor of worrying about Elliot's recovery after an injury on "Organized Crime" Season 5, Episode 2, "Dante's Inferno." 

Mariska Hargitay appeared in four episodes set in Dick Wolf's "One Chicago" universe between 2014 and 2016. Olivia first goes to Chicago in a Season 2 Episode of "Chicago P.D." titled "They'll Have to Go Through Me." In this episode, Olivia travels to the Windy City to help the Chicago Intelligence Unit in the investigation and takedown of a sex trafficking ring. In press interviews leading up to the episode's premiere, Hargitay said that, despite the seriousness of the topics they were covering, she had fun on set and was excited for fans to see the story unfold. 

Benson went back to Chicago in spring 2015 for another crossover event. In "Chicago Fire" Season 3, Episode 21, "We Called Her Jellybean," an apartment fire turns out to resemble an unsolved case in New York from a decade earlier. The investigation continues in "Chicago P.D." Season 2, Episode 20, "The Number of Rats" and concludes on "SVU" Season 16, Episode 20, "Daydream Believer," when a rape and murder suspect kidnaps a victim in Chicago and takes her to New York City. Olivia's latest visit to Chicago took place in "Chicago P.D." Season 3, Episode 14, "The Song of Gregory Williams Yates," in which she and Fin Tutuola (Ice-T) go to Chicago to help the CIU locate and recapture an escaped killer.  

The first time Mariska Hargitay played Olivia Benson outside of a scripted drama was on "Saturday Night Live" in 2019, when "Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington hosted and Sara Bareilles was the musical guest. "Game of Thrones" was in its final season that year, so "SNL" did a spoof on the ridiculous spin-offs that were inevitably coming down the line. At the end of the sketch, Olivia and Detective Fin Tutuola appear on screen in medieval-style costumes to preview the fake spin-off "Game of Thrones: SVU." 

Hargitay and her "SVU" co-stars might just have manifested this cameo; years before it happened, she told E! News that, off camera, she's so much sillier than Olivia that her colleagues don't know how she landed such a serious role. "My real personality is more 'Saturday Night Live' than Olivia Benson," she said. "Ice is always like 'Damn, I don't know how you got on this show. You should be on SNL.' So they always talk about it on set." 

It would be about seven years before she got the cameo, and she still hasn't hosted the show — although Ice-T once spearheaded a social media campaign to try and make it happen. Hargitay wasn't waiting by the phone for a call, however. "It's such a compliment that my coworkers even think that I would be worthy enough," she said.

Technically, there were two Olivia Bensons on screen in this 2026 Emmys sketch, which saw Mariska Hargitay channel Captain Benson in order to "solve" the mystery of whether Taylor Swift would appear at that year's awards show. Swift appeared in the pretaped skit with her cat, whom she named after Benson. 

The "Patient Zero" singer played an unnamed rookie detective toting her cat around alongside Hargitay's "SVU" co-stars: Ice-T as Detective Fin Tutuola, Peter Scanavino as ADA Dominick 'Sonny' Carisi Jr., Kelli Giddish as Detective Amanda Rollins, Corey Cott as Griffin, Aimé Donna Kelly as Captain Renee Curry, and Kevin Kane as Detective Terry Bruno. They all spew nonsense connections between Swift and the Emmys, lightly mocking the Swifties who try to put together the Easter eggs the singer regularly drops for fans. It was finally determined that Swift wouldn't attend because, although "The Eras Tour: The Final Show" was nominated for five Emmys, the categories were announced before Emmys night, and her husband, Travis Kelce, was playing football that evening.

An executive producer of the Emmys, Jeannae Rouzan-Clay, said of the sketch, "If you're gonna do [an 'SVU' sketch] ... we all felt like you have to one-up what everyone's thinking, and I can't think of anything better than to throw Taylor in an 'SVU' sketch," The Wrap reported. Another executive producer, Jesse Collins, said that it was Hargitay who had made the call to Swift — a personal friend of hers — to make it happen.