Mariska Hargitay discovered parental truth from head of her mom's fab club
Mariska Hargitay discovered the truth about her biological father from the head of her late mother Jayne Mansfield's fan club.
Mariska Hargitay discovered the truth about her parentage from the head of her late mother's fan club.
The 61-year-old actress - whose mom, actress Jayne Mansfield, was killed in a car accident when she was a baby - recently revealed that she had discovered in her 20s that her dad was actually Italian entertainer Nelson Sardelli, who her mother had dated following a brief split from her spouse, Mickey Hargitay, who Mariska had grown up believing was her biological parent.
And she has now opened up on how the truth was first revealed.
Speaking on the Call Her Daddy podcast, she said: "It was so rough. I had been invited to this guy named Sabin Gray's house, and he was head of the Jayne Mansfield fan club, and he was this lovely guy and just obsessed with Jayne and loved her so much and was a huge collector of memorabilia and movie posters and anything related to her...
"He's showing me all these photos, he's showing me, whatever it is, dresses that she had that he collected, earrings that she wore, things from movies, from the movie set, props or whatever and then he says to me, 'Do you want to see a picture of Nelson?' And I just looked at him, and this jolt went through my body, and I said, 'Who's Nelson?' and then I knew in one second.
"I saw the blood drain out of [Sabin's] face, and he sort of panicked and turned white, and then he said, 'Oh, it's probably not true, it's probably not true.'
"And that's when I knew and I think that he couldn't believe that I didn't know. I was 25. How could I not know? And I understand that, and then, he says, 'It's not true. I'm sure it's not true,' and then he showed me his picture."
But the 'Law and Order: SUV' star realised the truth "on a cellular level, it was just like DNA talking to DNA" when she saw a picture of Nelson, and it made her feel her life was "over".
Mariska - who has August, 18, Amaya, 14, and Andrew, 13, with husband Peter Hermann - spoke with one of her brothers, who didn't know the real story and then went off to speak to Mickey.
She recalled: "I was hysterically crying and in a state and hear about this metaphor; My dad was building me, physically building me, a house, so I drive up to the house that he is building me and confront him, and he was like, 'What? What are you talking about? Are you crazy? That's so not true.
"He kept saying, 'You look like my father, you look exactly like my father. You're a Hargitay to the end,' and the irony is that I'm more like my dad than anyone in our whole family. I am mini Mickey. And so it was just a very extraordinarily painful moment."
The pair never spoke of it again and Mariska is unsure if Mickey - who died in 2006 - ever knew the real truth.
She said: "I pretended that I believed him and we never spoke of it again, and then he used to say, even before he died, 'Remember when you thought that crazy thing?' and I'd go, 'I know, wasn't that nuts?'
"I'll never know [if he knew]. I think that he integrated it [like] 'this is my new reality.' He made a choice, and that was his new truth and whether it's true or not emotionally, it was his truth.
"I understand it because I have two adopted kids, and they are no different, no different than my biological son, and so I go, 'I get it.' It didn't matter. It doesn't matter."
Mariska is now in contact with Nelson and his three daughters.
