{"slug": "mariska-hargitays-real-life-family-secret-brings-her-to-theatreworks-silicon", "title": "Mariska Hargitay’s real-life family secret brings her to TheatreWorks Silicon Valley", "summary": "Mariska Hargitay will perform the one-person play 'Every Brilliant Thing' at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in August, benefiting the theater and her Joyful Heart Foundation. The performances are tied to her recently discovered half-sister, TheatreWorks artistic director Giovanna Sardelli, after Hargitay learned at age 30 that her biological father was Nelson Sardelli, not Mickey Hargitay.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...To launch its 23rd annual New Works Festival, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is excited to announce that Mariska Hargitay, the TV legend and Taylor Swift cat muse, will come to Palo Alto in early August to provide a series of benefit performances of her recent acclaimed turn in the one-person Broadway play “Every Brilliant Thing.”\n\nBut for those wondering how even a well-regarded regional theater company like TheatreWorks can entice Hargitay, the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning star of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” to do some performances on its behalf, they should look no further than the company’s artistic director, Giovanna Sardelli.\n\nHargitay and Sardelli are half-sisters, even though the women’s relationship has a life-is-stranger-than-fiction Hollywood backstory that was part of “a lie” that Hargitay said she lived with for 30 years,[ according to Vanity Fair. ](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/mariska-hargitay-was-living-a-lie-for-30-years?srsltid=AfmBOoprSxvXjfj6T3g9YQRe2esQ0Idf0KB-GbFuCl0nEj5z18bIoNO0)\n\nAs 62-year-old Hargitay revealed in her 2025 documentary, “My Mom Jayne,” a candid but loving portrait of her sex symbol mother Jayne Mansfield, the father she had long known, Hungarian-American actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, was not her biological parent. Instead, Hargitay learned at age 30 that her bio-dad was Italian entertainer Nelson Sardelli, with whom Mansfield had a brief relationship while separated from Mickey Hargitay in the early 1960s.\n\nThis backstory of Hargitay’s parentage and new family ties will be addressed by Hargitay, Giovanna Sardelli and her other half sister, Pietra Sardelli, in a special post-show panel discussion, following a matinee performance of “Every Brilliant Thing” on Aug. 8, according to a TheatreWorks press release.\n\nHargitay will appear on stage at the Lucie Stern Theatre on the evening of Friday, Aug. 7 and for afternoon and evening performances on Saturday, Aug 8. Hargitay recently starred in a six-week run of “Every Brilliant Thing” on Broadway. For TheatreWorks, the Tony-nominated play by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe, will launch its annual New Works Festival, which provides playwrights and composers of national stature the opportunity to give Bay Area audiences a glimpse of new plays and musicals in development.\n\nWhile “Every Brilliant Thing” is described as “heartwarming and hilarious,” it also explores depression and grief in an interactive way as its solo performer plays a character creating a list of “brilliant things” for their suicidal mother. Hargitay’s TheatreWorks performances will benefit both the 56-year-old theater company and Joyful Heart Foundation, an organization she founded that has a Bay Area chapter and supports survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse, the press release said.\n\nHargitay is famous for playing NYPD detective Olivia Benson on the long-running NBC crime procedural, and her character’s name was famously given by “cat lady” Taylor Swift to one of her three pet felines. Hargitay was also one of the lucky A-listers who received invitations to attend Swift’s Madison Square Garden wedding to Travis Kelce.\n\nIn “My Mom Jayne,” Hargitay explored her complicated memories of her mother, who tragically died in a car crash in 1967 when she was 34 years old. Only 3 when her mother died. She also was a passenger in the car when it crashed, though she has said she has no memories of the accident.\n\nDubbed “Broadway’s smartest dumb blonde” by Life magazine, Mansfield spoke several languages and played violin and piano, Vanity Fair reported. But to get ahead in 1950s Hollywood, Mansfield adopted an extreme version of Marilyn Monroe’s breathy voice. She also dyed her hair bleach-blonde and wore ever-tighter dresses to enhance her buxom figure.\n\nAs Hargitay shared in her documentary and in an interview with Vanity Fair, she grew up mortified by “the blonde bimbo” image of her lost mother, “who had became the butt of everyone’s joke.”\n\n“I was embarrassed by the choices that she made,” Hargitay told Vanity Fair. She said Mickey Hargitay, her mother’s second husband who raised her as is own daughter, kept trying to tell her that her mother “wasn’t like that at all. She was funny and irreverent and fearless and real.”\n\nWhile Mickey Hargitay “was beyond reproach” to his daughter, Hargitay also grew up feeling that she was different from her siblings, two sons that Mickey Hargitay and Mansfield shared, according to Vanity Fair. In her 20s, Hargitay began to realize why when she was showed a photo of Nelson Sardelli, with whom her mother had a well-publicized relationship several months before her birth. She immediately knew he was her biological father, though she said Mickey Hargitay insisted that he was her biological father before his death in 2006.\n\nAt age 30, Hargitay went to see Sardelli perform in Atlantic City and introduced herself. According to Vanity Fair, he burst into tears, telling her, “I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment.”\n\nHargitay said she continued to regard Mickey Hargitay as her father, while she gradually got to know Sardelli and his daughters. “I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me,” she told Vanity Fair.\n\nAfter Hargitay’s performances, the New Works Festival continues through Aug. 16, and features the new musical, Vienna,” by “Come From Away” composers Irene Sankoff and David Hein; “Floor 36” by Margot Melcon; “RE” by Kimber Lee; “Roja” by Jaime Lozano and Tommy Newman; and “The Tell Tale Heart ,” adapted by Carlos Aguirre. For more information on the New Work Festival, visit [theatreworks.org/new-works/nwf/.](https://theatreworks.org/new-works/nwf/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mariska-hargitays-real-life-family-secret-brings-her-to-theatreworks-silicon", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/07/06/mariska-hargitay-secret-jayne-mansfield-theatreworks/", "published_at": "2026-07-06 22:45:30+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-07 00:41:32.276026+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Mariska Hargitay", "TheatreWorks Silicon Valley", "Giovanna Sardelli", "Joyful Heart Foundation", "Nelson Sardelli", "Mickey Hargitay", "Jayne Mansfield", "Taylor Swift"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mariska-hargitays-real-life-family-secret-brings-her-to-theatreworks-silicon", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mariska-hargitays-real-life-family-secret-brings-her-to-theatreworks-silicon.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mariska-hargitays-real-life-family-secret-brings-her-to-theatreworks-silicon.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mariska-hargitays-real-life-family-secret-brings-her-to-theatreworks-silicon.jsonld"}}