Mariska Hargitay shared how her biological father, Nelson Sardelli, reacted to her new documentary, My Mom Jayne.
“My birth father … was thrilled because he’d been living with this secret, too, all these years,” the Law & Order: SVU star, 61, said on the Thursday, June 26, broadcast of Today. “My sisters were over the moon because, obviously, they’d been kept a secret. My [other] siblings were hesitant and like, ‘Wait, what? Why are you digging up the past?’”
She added, “We talked about it more, and they said, ‘Look, we support you. We trust you, and it’s your story to tell.’”
While exploring the life and legacy of her late mother, Jayne Mansfield, Mariska revealed in My Mom Jayne that her birth father is Italian singer Sardelli, 90, and not bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay as she always thought growing up. (Mansfield and Mickey also shared three other children, while Sardelli has daughters from a previous relationship.)
Mariska Hargitay Reveals the Identity of Her Biological Father
“That’s something that really shattered me when I found out,” Mariska said on Today. “I really had an identity crisis because, before that, my father was my rock and my mentor and my everything. I wanted to be like him [and] he was my hero. I always thought [and] I always said, ‘The best things about me come from my dad.’ To find that out — and the way that I found that out — was so brutal.”
Mansfield died in a car accident in 1967 when Mariska was 3 years old. The HBO documentary, which is Mariska’s directorial debut, uses archival footage to dive deeper into Mansfield’s story.
“I think she would be really happy,” Mariska speculated on Thursday of her mother’s reaction to the documentary. “Talk about [being] seen for all of her facets, and not just one way. I think she’d be really happy that we got to make a movie together.”
What to Know About Mariska Hargitay’s Surprise Biological Father
When reflecting on discovering her biological father’s identity, Mariska recently said it felt like a “jolt” when she learned the truth.
“He was like, ‘What are you talking about? Are you crazy? That’s so not true,’” Mariska recalled of a confrontation she had with Mickey, who died in 2006, on the Wednesday, June 25, episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “I pretended that I believed him, and we never spoke of it again.”
Mariska further revealed that she only has a “couple of memories” with her mother before she died.
“I have a couple of memories that — I don’t know if they’re memories or they’re photographs or they’re something that I wish happened or a fragment of a memory,” Hargitay explained to podcast host Alex Cooper. “It’s been a life of longing for her and trying to reconstruct connection.”
She continued, “I say in the movie, losing my mother felt like having a hole in your heart. So it’s been a life of navigating that and trying to figure [it] out.”
My Mom Jayne premieres via HBO Friday, June 27.
