Amy Poehler<\/a> on her Good Hang podcast: “When it happens, because it happens on set a lot, now on the call sheet, it’s M-A-R-I-S-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-K-A. That’s how I put it on the call sheet, just so people go, ‘Oh, okay, got it. She’s big on the Hs.’<\/p>\n“[I’ve been called] Maritza, Marcika, Markiska, but [Christopher Meloni] will call me Maritza on set.”<\/p>\n
And even the actress’ own family members get the pronunciation wrong.<\/p>\n
\nShe said: “Oh, I still live with it. Who was it last night? Oh, I had a lunch yesterday \u2014 brunch, for my sister, and my cousin was there. I’ve known him since 1994, and he kept calling me Ma-ris-ka.”<\/p>\n
\nMariska was named after her paternal grandmother and she joked the name means “gorgeous, talented one, ray of sunshine, queen of, queen of \u2014 queen of something.” <\/p>\n
\nBut then she added: “It’s a nickname for Maria. It means little Maria. In Hungarian, the K-A or K-E on the end of a name, it just is a little endearment. So the name is actually Maria, after my grandmother.”<\/p>\n
\nDespite being best known for playing Olivia Benson on Law + Order: SVU, Mariska thought she would be a comedy actress and revealed she tested for a main role in Friends “many times”.<\/p>\n
\nShe said: \u201cI did a lot of [comedy auditions]. I did Seinfeld, and I did Single Guy, and I tested for Friends so many times.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI think it\u2019s Monica \u2014 so long ago, again. But I always thought that I would end up being on a sitcom or doing comedy, that\u2019s what I thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAs a “struggling actor”, Mariska was urged to see a psychic by her friends while on a trip to New York City and she was amazed by the “amazing stuff” he said to her.<\/p>\n
\nShe recalled: \u201cHe said to me, \u2018You see that face you\u2019re doing right now? You see that face?\u2019 \u2026 I said, \u2018Yeah.\u2019 He goes, \u2018You\u2019re gonna be famous for that face. You\u2019re moving to New York, and you\u2019re gonna be famous for that face.’<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAnd I said, \u2018Uh, no, I live in L.A., and I\u2019m gonna be a comedian because I\u2019m funny, and I\u2019m pretty, and that is a deadly combination.\u2019 And he looks at me \u2014 and this is my favourite moment in my life \u2014 and he goes like this, \u2018I don\u2019t give a rat\u2019s a** what you say.’\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"27 October 2025 Mariska Hargitay deliberately has her name spelled wrong on the set of Law + Order: Special Victims Unit. Mariska Hargitay constantly has people mispronounce her name The 61-year-old actress is used to people mispronouncing her Hungarian moniker so has resorted to ensuring the ‘sh’ sound in the middle is listed out phonetically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8296,1206],"class_list":{"0":"post-201585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-amy-poehler","9":"tag-mariska-hargitay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}