Mariska Hargitay is setting the record straight on how to pronounce her name after a three-decade career.
The 61-year-old actress was a guest on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast on Tuesday, where she revealed the pronunciation and meaning of her Hungarian name.
Mariska — who is the daughter of late Hollywood legend Jayne Mansfield and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay — said her name is a nickname for Maria and means ‘Little Maria.’
‘In Hungarian, the “ka” or “ke” at the end of the name is just like a little endearment,’ she explained. ‘So the name is actually ‘Maria’ after my grandmother, both of them, Hungarian and Italian.’
Despite her fame, the Law & Order: SVU star said people, including family, still mispronounce her moniker.
She recalled, ‘I had a lunch yesterday for my sister and my cousin was there. I’ve known him since 1994 and he kept calling me “Muh-ris-kuh.”‘
Mariska Hargitay is setting the record straight on how to pronounce her name after a three-decade career
he 61-year-old actress was a guest on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast on Tuesday, where she broke down the pronunciation and meaning of her Hungarian name
Instead of correcting the family member, she said she ‘let it go.’
It’s something she’s also had to deal with at work on the set of her long-running NBC show.
To avoid having to repeatedly correct people, she rewrote her name as “Marishhhhka” on the call sheet.
‘I get called Muh-ritz-uh, Mar-see-kuh, Mar-kis-kuh,’ Mariska lamented, adding that sometimes her co-stars teasingly call her by the wrong name.
She premiered her documentary My Mom Jayne at Tribeca Festival in June.
‘I think the reason I made this movie now is because I was ready to make it now,’ she told Stephen Colbert of her decision to produce the documentary 58 years after her mom’s tragic death.
The Emmy-winning actress added, ‘In a way I feel like I’ve been preparing my entire life to make it.’
She went on to say that she discovered boxes of fan letters pertaining to her mom during the covid-19 pandemic.
‘I had the time to sit with each letter and people had sent me things that were truly a gift,’ Hargitay said of finding the trove of personal stories and playbills.
‘So, I said, “I think I wanna dig in here,”‘ she added about feeling inspired to create the film.
‘I get called Muh-ritz-uh, Mar-see-kuh, Mar-kis-kuh,’ Mariska lamented
Mariska told Amy her name is a nickname for Maria and means ‘Little Maria’
In her documentary she dropped a bombshell revelation — that her biological father is former Las Vegas entertainer Nelson Sardelli and not Mickey, the man who raised her.
The deep-dive reveals Mariska’s siblings’ account of being pulled out of the wreck that killed their mom and taken to safety, only to realize later that Mariska had been left behind by mistake.
She was later found wedged under a seat with a head injury, at just three-years-old.
Her older brother Zoltan told her that Jayne had initially been in the backseat of the car but moved up front with her boyfriend Sam Brody during an argument.
The children remained asleep in the back of the Buick Electra, where they survived the crash that killed Jayne, Sam and driver Ronald Harrison.
My Mom Jayne premiered on HBO Max on June 27.
