Hargitay had beforehand revealed in a Vainness Truthful interview that her organic father is definitely Italian comic and singer Nelson Sardelli. She found the reality after visiting a collector’s residence full of memorabilia from her late mom.
Mariska Hargitay is opening up concerning the emotional second she confronted her father, Mickey Hargitay, after discovering he wasn’t her organic dad.
The Legislation & Order: SVU star joined the Name Her Daddy podcast on Wednesday, June 25, the place she recalled the heartbreaking day she discovered the reality about her household, and introduced it on to Mickey, who had raised her and her two brothers, Mickey Jr. and Zoltán, because the tragic 1967 loss of life of her mom, Hollywood starlet, Jayne Mansfield.
“I went to my brother’s home first and requested him if he knew, and he mentioned he did not and I am very, very, very, very shut with my brother and he did not,” she instructed host Alex Cooper. “So then that was additionally complicated.”
“I went as much as my dad’s home and I used to be hysterically crying and in a state,” Mariska continued. “And he was — how about this metaphor — my dad was bodily constructing me a home. So, I drive as much as the home that he’s constructing me and confront him.”
Hargitay mentioned Mickey shortly denied every little thing. “He was like, ‘What are you speaking about? Are you loopy? That is so not true.'”
Regardless of her confusion and heartbreak, Mickey targeted on what related them — not what biology claimed.
“He stored saying, ‘You are a Hargitay to the tip,'” she recalled, including, “The irony is that I’m extra like my dad than anybody in our entire household. I’m mini-Mickey, so it was only a very terribly painful second.”
“I say that that is the second that I grew to become an grownup and it is so visceral for me as a result of I used to be in a lot ache. I used to be so overwhelmed,” Mariska continued.
Even within the midst of her ache, the 61-year-old TV star remembered seeing simply how a lot it damage her father too, and that modified every little thing.
“I noticed the blood drain out of his face and he form of panicked and turned white,” she mentioned. “And that is after I knew.”
And the tip of the day, nevertheless, Mariska determined to decide on love over confrontation.
“It does not matter what I really feel, I really like him … and we’re completed right here, we’re completed right here,” she mentioned. “I pretended that I believed him, and we by no means spoke of it once more.”
Hargitay had beforehand revealed in a Vainness Truthful interview that her organic father is definitely Italian comic and singer Nelson Sardelli. She found the reality after visiting a collector’s residence full of memorabilia from her late mom — and listening to Sardelli’s title sparked one thing deep in her.

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“I knew in a single second,” she mentioned. “I do not know (how). I believe my entire life, all of the tens of millions of moments … little fragments of a reminiscence of a second of issues I caught that went into my unconscious. Then I mentioned, ‘Who’s Nelson?'”
Seeing a photograph of Sardelli confirmed what her intestine had already instructed her.
“I simply actually thought my life was over,” she admitted. “The one factor I did have, the one factor that I used to be rooted in, the one factor that was my fixed, was now not mine. My identification was simply smashed.”