Pregnant Is The New Pink™ it seems, and maternity is not consigned solely to feature films. Mariska Hargitay, who plays Detective Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit, is also expecting. The difference is that she is a primary cast member on a weekly television series.
Add L&O: SVU to the storied & time-honored list of famous television pregnancies (onscreen and off) including but not limited to: Rachel Green, Phoebe Buffay, Monica Gellar-Bing, Miranda Hobbes, Murphy Brown, Lucy McGillicuddy Ricardo, and Pebbles Flintstone-Rubble.
Syncing up an actor's Real Life with their fictional alter-ego is not new to television. But Mariska's maternity does (possibly) nudge the show's Shark Jump Status that much closer to Defcon 1. Which for NBC, a last-place network, is a less-than-thrilling prospect.
How will they pull it off? They will most likely refer to every wrinkled, cello-taped, dog-eared, coffee-stained page of the Television Pregnancy Handbook, in chapter and verse. Thank every soap opera ever made for most of the innovations. Some highlights:
Perpetual Winter = dress everyone in lots of layers as long as the actors can stand to do it; SVU isn't super-dependent on the change of seasons (they don't ever do a Very Special Kwanza Episode, for example); if there's rain or snow or sleet or dark of night they simply deal with it. So Det. Benson and Company could just wear mukluks & North Face Everest gear in perpetuity until July.
Duck & Cover = This is a steady, steady diet of an actor viewed only and always through or behind inanimate objects. See Det. Benson ensconced behind her desk! Behind a hospital gurney! Under the soft drink machine! Staked out inside a file cabinet drawer! Television is also much more in close-up (hence the term "talking heads") than a feature, so high-and-tight shots of the actors are the norm. There's endless ways to cheat this without it being uber-obvious - or at least distracting.
Example: Raymond Burr played Perry Mason well into his terminal bout with cancer. He was always filmed seated or leaning on something in the later movies. Knowing he was wracked with the disease made it harrowing watching; you knew it was a struggle for him to even stand up to object in court.
Article comments
1 - Trinket
My understanding is that Olivia will be pregnant as well. That was supposedly the plan long ago once Mariska conceived.
2 - Tiffany Leigh
Full disclosure: I work for NBC/Universal and on this particular show. Due to logistics I don't get ultra-specific about my involvement or livelihood.
Plus I don't want to buzzkill all the people who watch the show. So I may or may not know more than the average bear, but wanted to write about this objectively. Ish.
That said, the writers always wanted her to eventually get pregnant, but I'm not positive as to *when* it happens. They may not be ready. This might be the best time, or it might not. So I left out "they're just pregnant, stupid" as an option when I wrote the above.
3 - Trinket
Ahhh. Gotcha. Sorry if I somehow stepped on toes it was so NOT my intent! Loved this piece for it's levity & "colossal" wit!
4 - Sean
One of the things I like about SVU is that you don't really get into the personal lives of the characters. Stabler's divorce was not a highlight: It was just a guy in the office getting a divorce. I hope they do the same thing with Olivia's pregnancy.
5 - Tiffany Leigh
Trinket - no toe-steppin' whatsoever. I just didn't want to make a big deal about my bias in the article ("oh btw I'm in show business") but at the same time wanted share an unusual and unique perspective since I'm in the fishbowl. Lots of goofy stuff happens at work, and a lot more stuff that's aggressively mundane and decidedly un-glam.
Sean: yeah, I love the ethos of the show too. They just "happen" to be cops working cases. That foundation in a reality, in a place that everyone can relate to and/or know someone like them (working, long hours, family life, etc) makes it less of a stretch when, say, they have to arrest Estella Warren for stealing sperm from a sperm bank. And it even makes the small glimpses into their lives exciting.
6 - Tiffany Leigh
Um, that's Estella Warren, the wooden blonde in Planet of the Apes, not Estelle Getty, the Golden Girl.
7 - Trinket
I agree completely. I love that we know very little about their personal lives. It does make each bread crumb dropped that much better too!
8 - Sean
I think that by rarely going into the personal lives of the characters, the Law & Order series has stayed fresh and avoided jumping the shark.
My favorite "crumb" was when the blonde prosecutor (the one not married to Bobby Flay) was canned and her response was "This is because I am a lesbian!" Where the hell did that come from?
9 - Tiffany Leigh
Yeah, that was outta left field.
And also from what I have heard, totally not the ending they had in the script. I think they added it later, so most of the other cast and crew had no idea that's what was going to happen. It kinda pulls you out a bit.
Not that I'm sad to see Elizabeth Rohm depart - I thought she was TERRIBLE, and that she only stayed on because Dick Wolf, the producer, is very, very vain, and would never stand to be corrected by dumping her sooner, thus confirming that everyone else was right.
10 - Trish
Dear God, please hook Olivia and Chris Meloni's character together to make the bebe! Please? So we can see his naked beautiful body again?
I miss Oz.
11 - Tiffany Leigh
I think if they wanted to guarantee a Shark Jump™, that's what would happen. Special Lovechild Unit.
Or better yet, make her have quintuplets and spin it into a half-hour sitcom, or an hour-long "Earnest Goes To The WB" a la 7th Heaven or Everwood. Then maybe during their suburban splendor Stabler gets popped for a crime he didn't commit, then is sent to Oz, and then has to room with Keller. I mean, if you're gonna Go There, I mean fricking Go There.
I don't think that's in the cards for this show, though. =)
12 - wenders1
Just about the only that had the b**ls and the creativity to deal with an actress playing an unmarried/unattached character getting pregnant was "Criminal Intent". When Kathryn Erbe became pregnant, the writers had her character become a surrogate mom for her sister. Erbe stayed on the show until it was medically impossible for her to be in every scene, at which point she appeared a couple of times in every episode, fully and obviously pregnant, with the surrogate mom angle integrated into the storyline.
13 - Tiffany Leigh
I don't watch Criminal Intent, but that sounds like a very interesting dramatic tack to take.
I always wondered what the actual restrictions were for NYPD Detectives that are expecting. In terms of liability and/or medical safety, when are they absolutely "forbade," if at all, from being in the field?
I'm not sure that Frances McDormand in Fargo was in the interests of strict verisimilitude. =)