Christopher Meloni discusses near-kiss with Mariska Hargitay on ‘SVU’

Christopher Meloni knows you want him to kiss Mariska Hargitay. He just isn’t convinced it would work.

The Law & Order: Organized Crime star reflected on his enduringly beloved on-screen relationship with Hargitay, during a recent TVLine Spotlight conversation. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit aired its first episode in 1999, introducing Detectives Elliot Stabler (Meloni) and Olivia Benson (Hargitay) to the world. Meloni discussed “the kitchen thing” — a scene in a season 24 episode of SVU in which Stabler and Benson, seemingly long-fated for romance, nearly kissed.

“We were attempting something. I don’t think it worked. But I’m not going to tell you why it didn’t work, because you all have your opinion,” Meloni said, adding teasingly, “I know what transpired.”

In the 2023 episode, “Blood Out” — an official crossover between Law & Order franchise creator Dick Wolf’s SVU, which Meloni left in 2011, and Organized Crime, which premiered in 2021 — Benson and Stabler get closer than ever to consummating the relationship so yearned for by fans that it’s been given its own name: “Bensler.”

“I care for you,” Stabler tells Benson, after a typically action-packed, emotionally draining mission. The pair draw close, embrace, and nearly kiss, but Benson pulls away, whispering, “Elliot, I want to. But I can’t.”

“I don’t go, ‘That’s what’s going to go on TV. That’s what we’re going to air.’ We don’t have that power. We do the best we can to be honest with the scenes we’re given,” Meloni explained, emphasizing that his and Hargitay’s goal is always to “make it honest, not make it bait. If we do bait, at least for me, I always do it with a wink. I think it’s good-natured, but maybe you guys are over that, and that’s valid. But you give us too much credit for the power that we might have — will-they-won’t-they and all that stuff.”

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The on-screen chemistry Meloni and Hargitay share, combined with their characters’ decades of intense, bonding experiences fighting crime together, has led to such a fervent fandom that even their costars have openly questioned why Bensler hasn’t happened.

“Y’all haven’t hooked up yet at all?” SVU star Ice-T asked Hargitay during EW’s digital cover shoot in 2024. “Close, right? Almost a kiss?” Hargitay joked back, “No, just two times in season 4!… No. We have not hooked up.”

Hargitay also addressed the season 24 near kiss last May, echoing Meloni’s assertion that it was out of their hands. “Chris and I thought it should go one way, and the powers that be didn’t, so it got changed at the last minute, that near kiss,” Hartigay explained. “Obviously, Dick gets final say. It’s his show, and he didn’t want that.”

You can watch the rest of Meloni’s interview with TVLine above.