Law & Order: SVU has featured plenty of guest stars during its over 25 years on air. This Modern Family alum was one of many celebrity appearances, and it changed her life forever.
How Ariel Winter felt about being on ‘Law & Order: SVU’
Many fans might know Ariel Winter primarily from her role as Alex Dunphy in Modern Family. But in 2019, she made the brief jump to SVU in the episode The Darkest Journey Home. The episode saw Winter playing the victim of a crime, who works with the SVU department to catch the perpetrator. Winter described her time with the SVU cast as a life-changing event, as she was able to work on one of her favorite shows. Which was why she was incredibly nervous in the beginning.
“My table read was actually the first time I was anywhere and meeting anybody. I thought I was going to pass out,” she said in an interview with E! News. “I’m not going to lie. I was so quiet, I was so sweaty, I was so nervous, and I do not get that way. Like, I just really don’t…I don’t know if there’s any situation where I really felt like that, and it was a wave of, ‘Holy s*** this is what I’m doing. I’m here; I’m with them. I’m in the same room, reading the script with them, breathing the same air.’ For me, it was a crazy feeling that I just haven’t particularly experienced. Seeing everyone in person, seeing Ice and Mariska and Kelli and Peter, and they walk in! I wanted to pass out.”
Winter also touched on what it was like working with Hargitay in the episode. Fortunately for the actor, Hargitay was every bit as welcoming and compassionate as Winter hoped she’d be.
“People always say, you meet your heroes, and you’ll be disappointed or whatever. And I never thought that was possible, but it’s always scary. I also didn’t want to be a letdown for meeting her either. So, for me, it was so scary,” Winter said about Hargitay. “But she is one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met in general, aside from being an insanely amazing actress, just as a person. You don’t find people like her that often that are exactly just who they are as people…She does so much. She cares so much. Meeting her, I just felt I had an instant connection with her as a person because she just makes you feel seen and heard. It was really an amazing experience and an experience that was mildly life-changing for me.”
Ariel Winter explained that working on ‘SVU’ was far different than working on ‘Modern Family’
The transition from Modern Family to SVU wasn’t an easy one for Winter. Apart from working with a cast she admired, she really wanted to honor the heavy subject matter of the episode. Initially, this was a nerve-racking concept for Winter. Although she already had much experience acting, Winter had to do away with the familiarity of Modern Family and its lighthearted comedy. But Hargitay and the SVU cast would help her adjust to the change.
“But when I got there, I was really guided so much by Mariska and the director and everybody there because it was so different for me,” she once told Entertainment Weekly. “I would get there with what I’d laid out. And they would like it. But they would come say something that I could maybe add to it or change to it. And it really was an incredible experience because I had that guidance. Everybody has a hard time letting go of control and those feelings and all of that. And Mariska really pushed me to let go of that and just feel and grow as an actor and as a person.”
