NEED TO KNOW
On the latest episode of Call Her Daddy, Mariska Hargitay revealed she was arrested in her 20s
Hargitay, who had been filming a music video for Ronnie Milsap at the time, says she was “thrown in the slammer” after speeding through a stop sign on her way home
Hargitay’s documentary My Mom Jayne debuts on HBO Max June 27, while Cooper’s documentary Call Her Alex is available now on Hulu
Turns out, even Olivia Benson has been to jail!
Mariska Hargitay joined Alex Cooper on the most recent episode of Call Her Daddy, where the Law & Order: SVU star shared that after starring in a music video in the 1980s, she briefly ended up behind bars.
“I was arrested and thrown in the slammer …. this is an excellent story,” Hargitay, 61, said of what happened after she finished filming the video for Ronnie Milsap’s “She Loves My Car” clad in a bright pink costume, lipstick and lots of makeup to rush home to see her parents before they left on a trip to Africa.
“[I’m in] no shoes, like in fishnets and a questionable outfit, let’s just say,” she added of the get-up. “I’ve always been known to have a bit of a lead foot and stop signs, well, you know, I always saw it as optional. I’ve changed my way since then, but I would not stop. It was just about like rolling through the red light. I’m not proud of it and don’t do this at home!”
“I was trying to race home to see my parents,” she continued, “all of a sudden, [they] pull me over. And they’re like, ‘Ma’am, you just ran the stop sign.’ I was like, ‘I’m going home to see my parents. Please, please.'”
Hargitay went on to explain that the officer asked her for her driver’s license and then had her step out of her car.
After Cooper urged Hargitay to reveal why rolling a stop sign would warrant an arrest, the actress revealed that at the time, she had $3,000 in outstanding parking tickets.
“Because at UCLA, I was late to class and I didn’t always use my parking pass because the garage where my classes were was so far away,” she explained of her time in college. “I was like, ‘I’ll just be fine. I’ll be really quick. I’ll just go to class and come back out,’ and I would get tickets every day. And I was in like a fantasy denial world. And so I had $3,000.”
The outstanding tickets compounded by Hargitay’s outfit post-music video had the officer seemingly “making a lot of judgment about me,” she said, “and he puts me in his car, locks me in the back and throws me in the clink.”
Call Her Daddy
Alex Cooper and Mariska Hargitay for Call Her Daddy
Hargitay then said she knew she couldn’t call her parents back and tell them about her predicament after she’d just informed them she’d be home to see them off on their trip, so she instead called to say “’Hey. Oh, the video, the shoot has gone over. I don’t know that I can [make it].'”
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Hargitay’s bail had been around $180, she said, but as somebody who admittedly “never had cash” on her in her twenties, she was “one $20 short of making bail.”
“[So] they threw me in the clink and I’m standing there and everyone’s like, ‘What are you in for?’ And I asked everybody what they were in for. But I make friends with everyone and then they all gave me phone numbers,” she said.
Call Her Daddy
Mariska Hargitay on Call Her Daddy
After a friend eventually came to bail Hargitay out, she made good on those phone calls.
“When I left, I was calling, ‘Hey, I just wanna let you know, um, your friend is in Santa Monica jailhouse.’ And it was so funny. People were like, ‘What are you in for?’ And I was like, ‘I got a speeding ticket!'”
Hargitay’s documentary My Mom Jayne debuts on HBO Max June 27, while Cooper’s documentary Call Her Alex is available now on Hulu.
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