Reneé Rapp Says Her Dream Role Is Playing Olivia Benson’s Lover On ‘SVU’
Reneé Rapp has a very specific idea for how she’d join ‘Law & Order: SVU’.
Featured image: Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Reneé Rapp tends to say exactly what’s on her mind, and bless her for it. So when she was asked on The Today Show what kind of character she’d want to play on Law & Order: SVU, her response didn’t come with a filter.
“Let me tell ya. I would be Mariska Hargitay’s lover,” she said, flipping her hair. “She would be gay, finally.”
In the clip, which is now circulating across social media, Rapp reacts to the question as if she’s been waiting for someone to ask it for years. “Whoever came up with this question, I just want to say thank you so much. You’ve done more for my community than you can even imagine.”
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“There was an episode where they were like, talking about it and considering if she was gay,” Rapp continued, referencing 2010’s P.C., which featured Kathy Griffin as a lesbian activist who flirts with Benson. “I feel like Christopher Meloni’s character was like, ‘Oh, like, you’re a lesbian,’ and she was like, ‘Um, no.’ Liar.”
The show has teased romantic tension between Benson and her former partner Elliot Stabler, and the network has leaned into that will-they-won’t-they dynamic without ever fully committing. Meloni himself recently responded to a fan demanding he kiss Hargitay’s character with, “I’m f—ing trying.”
But Rapp is offering an intriguing alternative, and she’s even thought about a possible storyline. “We would somehow get like, tangled in like, an undercover kind of mish, probably with, like, a drug empire,” she said.
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Rapp has made it clear that acting supports her music, not the other way around. “Acting was my way into tricking everyone that I warranted attention,” she told Variety in 2022. But the idea of playing a character that queers the narrative clearly interests her enough to make an exception.
There’s no indication that Rapp will appear on the show anytime soon, but the fact that her response went viral indicates there’d certainly be an audience for it. Hey SVU producers, are you listening?
