Mariska Hargitay has name misspelt on Law + Order: SUV set

Mariska Hargitay deliberately has her name spelled wrong on the set of Law + Order: Special Victims Unit in a bit to get it pronounced correctly.

Mariska Hargitay deliberately has her name spelled wrong on the set of Law + Order: Special Victims Unit.

The 61-year-old actress is used to people mispronouncing her Hungarian moniker so has resorted to ensuring the ‘sh’ sound in the middle is listed out phonetically on the call sheets for the long-running crime drama.

Mariska – who is the daughter of Hollywood legends Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay – told Amy Poehler on her Good Hang podcast: “When it happens, because it happens on set a lot, now on the call sheet, it’s M-A-R-I-S-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-K-A. That’s how I put it on the call sheet, just so people go, ‘Oh, okay, got it. She’s big on the Hs.’

“[I’ve been called] Maritza, Marcika, Markiska, but [Christopher Meloni] will call me Maritza on set.”

And even the actress’ own family members get the pronunciation wrong.

She said: “Oh, I still live with it. Who was it last night? Oh, I had a lunch yesterday — brunch, for my sister, and my cousin was there. I’ve known him since 1994, and he kept calling me Ma-ris-ka.”

Mariska was named after her paternal grandmother and she joked the name means “gorgeous, talented one, ray of sunshine, queen of, queen of — queen of something.”

But then she added: “It’s a nickname for Maria. It means little Maria. In Hungarian, the K-A or K-E on the end of a name, it just is a little endearment. So the name is actually Maria, after my grandmother.”

Despite being best known for playing Olivia Benson on Law + Order: SVU, Mariska thought she would be a comedy actress and revealed she tested for a main role in Friends “many times”.

She said: “I did a lot of [comedy auditions]. I did Seinfeld, and I did Single Guy, and I tested for Friends so many times.

“I think it’s Monica — so long ago, again. But I always thought that I would end up being on a sitcom or doing comedy, that’s what I thought.”

As a “struggling actor”, Mariska was urged to see a psychic by her friends while on a trip to New York City and she was amazed by the “amazing stuff” he said to her.

She recalled: “He said to me, ‘You see that face you’re doing right now? You see that face?’ … I said, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘You’re gonna be famous for that face. You’re moving to New York, and you’re gonna be famous for that face.’

“And I said, ‘Uh, no, I live in L.A., and I’m gonna be a comedian because I’m funny, and I’m pretty, and that is a deadly combination.’ And he looks at me — and this is my favourite moment in my life — and he goes like this, ‘I don’t give a rat’s a** what you say.’”