Mariska Hargitay says cut Benson and Stabler “SVU” kiss was shot ‘a couple different ways’

Key Points

• Mariska Hargitay shares a brand new tidbit concerning the notorious near-kiss of Olivia Benson and Christopher Meloni’s Elliot Stabler on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

• “We shot it a couple different ways,” Hargitay shares throughout a dialog with The Hollywood Reporter. “We thought that it was earned and the way it was dealt with was really complex.”

• The stars have beforehand stated that creator Dick Wolf vetoed the kiss.

The notorious Law & Order: Special Victims Unit kiss that was by no means between Mariska Hargitay‘s Olivia Benson and Christopher Meloni‘s Elliot Stabler had been filmed a number of methods earlier than Law & Order Franchise creator Dick Wolf vetoed it in totality.

Fans will recall “the kitchen thing,” as Meloni calls the temporary second in a season 24 episode of SVU, featured Stabler and Benson, seemingly long-fated for love, almost kissing after years of will-they-won’t-they rigidity. Viewers had been hyped for the kiss after a teaser for the 2023 episode “Blood Out” confirmed Benson holding Stabler’s face and leaning in for a kiss — however when the episode lastly arrived, there was no smooch in sight.

Both Hargitay and Meloni previously revealed that a kiss had been put forward before it was overruled on the eleventh hour, however throughout a dialog with The Hollywood Reporter for its Awards Chatter podcastHargitay shared that she and her former Costar had really shot the kiss “a couple different ways.”

“I think we felt that this moment was earned, that this thing could happen for a second — and so that’s how we shot it,” Hargitay advised the outlet in entrance of a reside viewers at Napa Valley StreamFest. “Don’t you would like you had been there for that?! Yeah. We shot it a couple different methods. And then they [Wolf and others] had the selection in modifying, and they [opted to use the near-kiss version rather than the kiss]”

Hargitay confessed that she and Meloni disagreed with the choice to scrap the kiss as a result of “we thought that it was earned and the way it was dealt with was really complex and very beautiful and very human and showed the complexity of their relationship and all the different ways that they’re connected.”

“[But] no matter what I want, Dick Wolf can totally just say, ‘Uh, no,'” the actress lamented.

When questioned if Meloni would return to SVU after the cancellation of his spinoff Law & Order: Organized CrimeHargitay moderately identified that the actor might be engaged on his upcoming collection, Hulu’s soccer drama The Land.

“Chris has his own show now. At some point? I mean, anything’s possible,” she advised THR. “Yes. The answer to that is he and I are not… it’s not done. It’s not dun-dun [the L&O sound] —see what I did there?”

In “Blood Out” — an official crossover between SVUfrom which Meloni left in 2011, and Organized Crimewhich premiered in 2021 and was recently canceled after five seasons —Benson and Stabler get closer than ever to consuming the connection so yearned for by followers that it has been given its personal identify: Bensler.

“I care for you,” Stabler tells Benson, after a usually action-packed, emotionally draining mission. The pair drew shut, embraced, and almost kissed, however Benson pulled away, whispering, “Elliot, I want to. But I can’t.”

During an interview with TVLine Spotlight conversation in 2025, Meloni echoed Hargitay’s sentiment about not having the power to go along with their model towards Wolf’s say-so.

“I don’t go, ‘That’s what’s going to go on TV. That’s what we’re going to air.’ We don’t have that power. We do the best we can to be honest with the scenes we’re given,” Meloni defined, emphasizing that his and Hargitay’s objective is all the time to “make it honest, not make it bait. If we do bait, at least for me, I always do it with a wink. I think it’s good-natured, but maybe you guys are over that, and that’s valid. But you give us too much credit for the power that we might have — will-they-won’t-they and all that stuff.”

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At least followers can relaxation assured that they are not the one ones confounded by the gradual burn of the Benson-Stabler relationship. Fellow SVU star Ice-T expressed his personal shock throughout a current Entertainment Weekly digital cover shoot.

“Y’all haven’t hooked up yet at all?” SVU star Ice-T requested Hargitay throughout EW’s digital cover shoot in 2024. “Close, right? Almost a kiss?” Hargitay joked again, “No, just two times in season 4!… No. We have not hooked up.”

Ice-T quipped. “Season 26.”

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