Kelli Giddish remembers the night Mariska Hargitay told friends she had landed a play — "I was there the night she was like, 'I'm in a play! I got a play!'" Giddish said, and added: "I'm so excited for her."
Hargitay will appear on Broadway for the first time as the star of Every Brilliant Thing beginning May 26, taking over a role whose current run concludes when Daniel Radcliffe's run ends on May 24. For Giddish, the debut is personal: "Just being able to celebrate her? I can't wait for that night."
Giddish said she has known Hargitay since 2011 and that they are close. "We're close. We spend a lot of time together and we're similar in a lot of ways," she said, describing a friendship that stretches back to their years together on Law & Order: SVU.
Hargitay has been a fixture on Law & Order: SVU since the series premiered in 1999; Giddish joined the cast in 2011 as Sgt. Amanda Rollins. Giddish left the show in December 2022 and returned as a series regular this past year. That shared history is part of why Giddish says she keeps checking in — she even sent Hargitay a personal clip from home: "I just texted Mariska. I texted her a video of my son this morning because I think she's working really hard at what she's doing right now, rehearsing a play."
The timing sharpens the moment. SVU wrapped filming on season 27 in April 2024, and the season finale aired on Thursday, May 14. Hargitay's move from a long-running television routine into the intensive rehearsal life of live theater is sudden in scale even if it has been building for years.
Giddish, who moved to New York when she was 22 and landed a Broadway show within a year only to watch that production close before it opened, says she still hopes to tread a Broadway stage herself someday. That backstory gives her a particular appreciation for Hargitay's step: she understands the workload and the stakes, and she intends to be there to mark the night.
The contrast is part of what makes Giddish's excitement readable: a colleague who has lived the grind of television and the fragility of theater, watching a friend take on an unfamiliar arena. Her voice is straightforward about what she plans to do next — celebrate — and about what Hargitay is doing now. "I'm so excited for her," she said again, and then, plainly: "I can't wait for that night."
On May 26, when Hargitay makes her first Broadway appearance in Every Brilliant Thing, Giddish's presence and those words will be the closing note: a colleague turned audience, ready to applaud the next chapter in a career that began on television in 1999 and now crosses into live theater.
