Sweta Keswani recently spilled the beans on how she landed a role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU). She also shared her experience working with Mariska Hargitay.
Sweta Keswani opens up on landing SVU role
In conversation with Hindustan Times, Shweta said, “This is just one episode, but I have been constantly working since I moved here 15 years ago,” Sweta began. “I’ve just been honing my craft, meeting people and giving auditions. That’s how this business works here. I’ve just been doing my job, and then what you get is what you get. It’s just that simple. And yet, it’s not easy. Simple doesn’t make it easy.”
Fun moments with Mariska Hargitay
Talking about bonding with Mariska Hargitay, she added, “They did scenes in reverse order, so first, I was dead, and then they did my scene. I was lying on the ground playing dead when Mariska said, ‘You’re doing a great job.’ I didn’t say anything, but later I asked her, ‘Was that a compliment or were you messing with me? or f**king with me.’ She burst out laughing and said, ‘I at least wait a day before I mess with people and then she corrected herself and said, ‘Oh, at least an hour before I f**k with people.’ She was really funny.”Elaborating further, she shared, “Any kind of creative work, especially something like this, is pure collaboration between me, her, and the director. Mariska would say, ‘Hey, can you be a little louder here?’ and I’d say, ‘Of course!’ The director would tell me something, and I’d say, ‘I got you.’ We were all on the same page, and that’s how you land the scene every time. It was high stakes, streets were blocked, a hundred people were around, so you have to deliver every single time.“
Handling emotional scenes
“So even if I did it maybe 6-8 times, I had to land it each time. It was an emotional scene, so at one point, she (Marishka) said Can I get a little more? I said to Mariska, ‘I am going to burn out.’ The director said that the camera is on my back, and then she said, ‘oh ya ya, in that case, do only that much that you don’t burn out.’ Because if it’s an emotional scene and you keep doing it, then you burn out. So she totally got it. She was amazing to work with and very chill,” she added.
Mariska Hargitay has Amitabh Bachchan energy
Sweta also stated that she feels Mariska has Amitabh Bachchan’s energy. She said, “When I met Mariska, I was like ‘you are more magnetic in person’. She totally has this Amitabh Bachchan energy, and she wouldn’t understand that when I told her that, so I didn’t. But she is the only second person I have met in my life who has that energy. Apart from Bachchan saab, whom I met many years ago, when Sakshi Tanwar and all the Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki people got to hang out with him, and he was such a sweetheart. So, Mariska completely had that energy. I haven’t met anybody like that after Bachchan saab, and especially not a woman. She is the only woman after Bachchan saab who has that energy. And I have met a lot of people like Rekha, Shah Rukh Khan, but Mariska has that energy that you feel like there’s a dynamo.”
