Mariska Hargitay is celebrating 500 episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
The 57-year-old actress has played Detective Olivia Benson on all 23 seasons of the beloved NBC series — but recently admitted that she couldn't bring herself to watch the 500th episode, which airs Thursday night.
"They sent me the link so many times and I was actually too nervous to watch it," she said during a Wednesday appearance on Live with Kelly and Ryan.
"Obviously I've been doing this show for so long and Olivia Benson is in me but I think that the idea of the 500th episode was so much pressure or something on me," she added. "And I was so nervous coming to work this day."
Hargitay then reflected on "the grind" of creating SVU.
"It's a marathon and you're on the hamster wheel of lines, lines, lines, lines, lines, cuts, cuts, cuts, edits, new script…" she said, while host Kelly Ripa noted, "I don't think people really understand how much work a show like that is.
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"Some episodes aren't quite as difficult but for me, this was sort of like this moment to take in what we've made, what we've created," Hargitay added of the 500th episode, which is set to feature the return of Danny Pino's Nick Amaro.
Also during her Live appearance, the star revealed herself to be a bit of a Succession superfan.
"Have I seen it?" she sarcastically asked Ripa, 50, and co-host Ryan Seacrest. "I watched two years on a Sunday and then a little bit into Monday."
"I couldn't stop, my kids are like, 'Mommy I'm hungry!' And I'm like 'Sweetie, not now, get some Pop Tarts, work it out,'" she continued.
Hargitay said she and her mother-in-law became "obsessed" with the hit HBO series, which recently kicked off its third season. She even attended a premiere event for season 3 and recalled fangirling when she saw Sarah Snook, who plays Shiv Roy.
"I asked if I could be on it," she later admitted, not sharing who exactly she asked. "I'm just putting it out into the universe."
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