“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” features one of the finer examples of all-star casts in procedural drama history, but at the end of the day, the show still comes down to two people: The central team of Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson and Christopher Meloni’s Elliot Stabler. They manage to be incredibly nuanced characters with complex personal dynamics, all the while serving as archetypal representations of the empathy and the fury each case elicits.
This tricky pair of roles requires a very particular chemistry between the actors, and fortunately for Hargitay and Meloni, they were paired during the casting process and thus got the opportunity to flaunt their connection at a crucial time. During an appearance on Amy Poehler’s podcast “Good Hang with Amy Poehler,” Hargitay told the story about the iconic pair’s first meeting — and also revealed that not only was “Mad Men” star John Slattery (whom she hadn’t met) also in the mix for the role of Stabler, but she ended up mistaking Meloni for him.
“So our callback was three women, three men. And we got to the audition and we were to be paired up,” Hargitay said. “In walks Chris Meloni and I go, ‘Slattery!’ And he goes, ‘Meloni!’ And so Minute 1, that’s how it opened. That’s how it opened. […] The experience was pretty magical.”
Hargitay and Meloni connected immediately, and Slattery has also done pretty well for himself
It’s hard to imagine that any of those other couples had a chance after Hargitay and Meloni got paired together at the “SVU” audition; indeed, the results speak for themselves. As Meloni told People in 2021, the connection was immediate. “[We] walked into the screen test, me telling her a story, and we get up onstage in front of all the suits, and we’re just so engaged,” he said.
There’s no need to feel sorry for John Slattery, though. In the years after missing out on “SVU,” he’d find a series of regular and recurring gigs on shows like “Ed,” “K Street,” “Jack & Bobby,” and “Desperate Housewives.” In 2007, Slattery started his tenure as Roger Sterling on “Mad Men,” and has gone on to appear on shows that range from “Veep” and “The Good Fight” to “Arrested Development” Season 4 and the John Grisham show “The Rainmaker.”