Michele Fazekas has known Mariska Hargitay and the “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” team for 25 years. While she didn’t join the drama as showrunner until this year’s 27th season, she was in the writers’ room for Seasons 3 through 7 and kept a friendship with the show’s leading women.
So, at the end of Season 26, as the Dick Wolf procedural began searching for a new showrunner, it was perfect timing: Fazekas had just wrapped Prime Video’s “Gen V” and was looking for something new. She returned in a big way, becoming the first woman to showrun the iconic series.
“I had a secret fantasy of having a female showrunner for … a few years,” quips star and exec producer Hargitay. “Michele and I always connected. She was so smart, and those years on ‘SVU’ were some of my favorites. Her episodes during that time were the best ones.”
Fazekas immediately realized there was “a great synchronicity with how we all think” upon joining the show. For example, she noted that the walls and lighting felt dark. She wasn’t afraid to bring it up to director Brenna Malloy — and her note was heard and implemented. “We were all rowing in the same direction. There’s no toxicity. Having worked in really toxic environments, it’s like, oh my God, I don’t know what to do with myself! We all just want to make a good show and not make it harder than it needs to be.”
The collaboration now feels like “it’s new and coming home at the same time,” says Hargitay. “There are emotional beats and comedy beats that are so specific to me and to the origins of the character. Obviously, it was time. It’s what ‘SVU’ needed more than anything, and it was the perfect fit. It’s all the elements coming together in a perfect way.”
This season marked the return of Kelli Giddish as Sgt. Amanda Rollins, above with co-stars Aimé Donna Kelly and Mariska Hargitay.
Virginia Sherwood/NBC
Those key elements are the other women on the show as well. In front of the camera, Kelli Giddish rejoined after being written out in Season 24. Behind the camera, Malloy had worked on six Wolf shows in the past and directed one episode of “SVU” in Season 26. This season, she became co-executive producer and directed four episodes.
“We feed off each other’s energy, and we feed off the drive to find the best version of the scene to make the best episode,” says Malloy. “With Michele running it, the strength of her relationship with Mariska and the trust they have in each other, plus the support from Wolf, it’s just a very cohesive team.”
Hargitay can’t help but excitedly jump in.
“I want to highlight that word: Team. That is the difference now,” she says. “There’s such a sense of lock arms, ladies. Let’s do this together — and, at the same time, push each other to be excellent, to be great, and know that we can do it and we will figure it out.”
Anastasia Puglisi and Rebecca McGill, executive producers on “SVU” and exec VPs at Wolf Entertainment, are key members of that team as well.
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“There’s a beautiful dynamic here of older friendships, but new collaborations and new relationships,” says Puglisi. “All of those things come together in a great way where there’s comfort, but there’s also so much newness here in this team that we’re all being stretched in different ways and pushed in different ways to think differently. We try to expand and approach this in different ways of filmmaking that we hadn’t thought of before, because this team hadn’t been here before.”
She adds that the environment now is “the most inspired,” something that comes across in the storytelling: “Our audiences are sophisticated. They can feel this from a mile away. You can walk on set, into the production office or into the writers’ room, and there’s an energy — it feels fresh and exciting.”
From the Wolf Entertainment side, the shift is also clear.
“There’s a special thoughtfulness and an intention to the writing. It’s kept survivors at the center, but there’s also more intention behind the words coming out of each specific character’s mouth,” says McGill. “It’s coming from their point of view and their hearts. These characters aren’t just characters to me and to the audience; they’re people. The more authentic they feel, the more you engage with them. Michele and her writing team have really done a beautiful job of refocusing on that.”
Fazekas wrote the finale of the season, which added the element of rain to the climax of
the story.
“It would be the easiest thing in the world for someone like Mariska to totally coast and say, ‘I’m not going to be in the woods at midnight soaking wet. I’ve earned that.’ But because Michele was in on the idea, so was Mariska. We had support from Wolf. We were all there in the woods, and she was soaking wet, holding the victim,” recalls Malloy. “I remember being in that moment and thinking, ‘I met Olivia Benson in the rain in the pilot. Here she is, 27 years later, still fighting for justice in the elements.’ We shot the scene, and I thought we had it. Mariska said, ‘I need one more.’ She did something so tender and maternal. I thought, this is why the show is still strong after 27 years. She wants to do better.”
Fazekas echoes the thought: “She does not phone it in. She’s not just collecting a paycheck. She makes everyone better.”
When the season wrapped, Hargitay got emotional over how great and grateful she felt. “Twenty-seven years in and I’m thinking, that’s one of my favorite episodes — that Michele could dig in and write this story that’s haunting me. Brenna is elevating details and tweaking constantly,” she says. “We all play hard and play our best.”
And despite (or maybe because of) so much change behind the scenes, Hargitay says this was one of the most seamless seasons yet. “The stars aligned,” she says. “As this year has proven with some of our best numbers, everything about it was right. Being on the show longer than anyone, it was one of the fastest, easiest and best seasons.”