Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay has revealed fears of "reinjuring" her children during the process of opening the "Pandora's box" of her mother's life for the documentary My Mom Jayne. Mariska, who is the youngest child the fifties bombshell, Jayne Mansfield, told the audience at Hello Sunshine's Shine Away event on Saturday, October 11, that she had "pushed away" memories of her mother because she was "somebody that I was afraid and scared of [because] there was just so much hurt and mess and yuck".
Mariska also "didn't want to reinjure myself or my family, quite frankly," but realized in 2020 during the pandemic that she now had the "infrastructure internally" to make a documentary about Jayne, and uncover long-buried memories and belief systems. "I went into something that I was so afraid of, but it was either I live like this and carry it for the rest of my life, or the only way out is through".
Jayne died in 1967 in a car accident; Mariska was in the backseat and survived. But growing up, Mariska held a lot of contempt for her mother, who was known in Hollywood as the blonde bombshell, speaking in a baby voice and often appearing in skimpy outfits and swimsuits.
"I made the movie in 2.5 years but I've been preparing to make it my entire life," she added. "I feel like that's what I've been doing" getting ready to make it by building the infrastructure inside me so I could tell the story in a clear, concise way while battling all these demons."
Mariska went on to follow in her mom's footsteps and for 26 years has played Detective Olivia Benson in Law & Order: SVU, as well as launching her non-profit Joyful Heart, which provides support to people who have been sexually abused and raises awareness about untested rape kits.
In 2004, she married Peter Hermann, an actor she met on the set of Law & Order: SVU, and together they have three children: son August, 19, followed by Amaya Josephine, 14, whom they adopted in 2011, and Andrew Nicholas, 13, whom they adopted six months later.
But she steered clear of talking about her mother, and in 2025 told Vanity Fair that she would fall asleep when the topic of her mother came up – "like a narcoleptic!" – until 2020 gave her the time to finally go through boxes of letters and mementos friends and fans of Jayne's had sent her over the years.
"I started reading these letters and one of the letters said to me, 'Dear Mariska, I played violin with your mother in high school and I used to sit outside her driveway and listen to her play,' and I was so bowled over this idea of my mother being this extraordinary musician that inspired her friend to do that," said Mariska.
"So I started cold calling people that had written these letters, and got hold of probably four people and had these extraordinary conversations with them," Mariska continued. "It was like somebody handing me a piece of my mother I had yearned for, for so long, and at the same time it was something I had pushed away... there didn't seem that there was love there for me, so I just shut it out and moved on. But I went on this journey to find out who she was, and the music aspect was such an extraordinary way in because I saw this other part of her after I'd only seen one part of her."
At the end of the documentary, Mariska's husband Peter is seen gifting her Jayne's beloved piano, an instrument Mariska had spent years hoping to purchase.