Mariska Hargitay Hilariously Reveals the Birthday Present Chris Meloni Got Her

A gorgeous present to celebrate their years-long friendship! Happy birthday, Mariska!

Mariska Hargitay’s birthday was January 23, something that surely did not go unnoticed by her Law & Order: Special Victims Unit co-star Chris Meloni!
On a video posted to her official Instagram account the next day (January 24), Hargitay revealed Meloni’s b-day present to her via an ultra-zoomed-in video.

“Hey, Chris…Chris…you asked me if I knew what day it was yesterday…and I wasn’t sure…” she said in a hushed ASMR-style tone.

Then, she panned the camera away to reveal her wearing a birthday hat and holding a gorgeous bouquet of flowers. “But then I figured it out…because…I got these pretty flowers from you!” she said, tagging Meloni’s account in the post. How sweet!

“OUR FAVES,” the official NBC Instagram account commented in support.
The clip was a mirrored response to Chris Meloni’s funny, delightfully weird message he posted on his Instagram page to honor his long-time friend’s birthday. In his video, we get an extreme closeup of Meloni’s forehead and eyes as he whispers, “Marsha? You there? Do you know what today is? I do.”

“Happy…!” he says before the video suddenly cuts off. “Celebrate it, Marsha,” he captioned the post.
Hargitay and Meloni have had a strong friendship for many years. At the 2021 Glamour Women of the Year Awards, he said about her, “I have been trusted with one task tonight: introduce someone who needs no introduction, who I’ve been working with for 13 years, and been friends with for 22. She’s got great energy, great personality. So tonight, I say this: Radiant. Charming. Funny. Generous. Elegant. Bawdy. Honest. Appreciative. Inclusive. Direct. Vivacious. That’s my favorite word; it comes from the Latin, to live. Which is what she does with great passion, every day, with everyone that she engages, be they friends, family, strangers, or commitments.”

“She’s fearless, without the bravado of the warrior stance, but always with the open arms, the open heart. She’s a connector of people because she knows we’re all better when we’re working together. She is as comfortable in the sacred as she is in the profane; she is a soul in the constant search of the beauty and the truth that she knows that this world holds, but she also knows requires vigilance, persistence, and insistence to pry magic from the oftentimes mundane reality. Her first instance is to always react with compassion and empathy. She sees hope in the hopeless; she sees the potential in the you, and me, and us,” he added.