Mariska Hargitay Knows Loss And Longing

I started this podcast four years ago, going through old boxes of things my mom and dad and brother left behind when they died. They're still in my basement. It's been a while since I've tried to sort through them. But like many of you, the pain of the past is never far away. When I was six years old, I lost my mother. Many of you have left voicemails from long ago losses that still echo in your lives today. My baby brother died at birth. The griefs affected me a lot. Three years ago, like four and a half year old brothers in God, I've been living with grief for over forty years. My dad died about twenty-four years ago and I've never really died. That my brother's death keeps her to see my thoughts, but underneath there's pain that never really goes away. As Ken Burns said on an earlier podcast, the half-life of grief is endless. Mariska Hargote knows that very well. Mariska's mom, actress Jane Mansfield, died when she was three. She was raised by her father, Hungarian actor and bodybuilder, Mickey Hargote. Today, she was signed to a long-term movie contract by a twentieth-century buck. At the moment, she was also the most photographed woman in show business. Jane Mansfield was killed in a car crash in 1967. Mariska was in the car with her. In her 20s, she discovered Mickey Hargote was not her biological father, an Italian singer Nelson Sardelli was. Another decade spent coming to terms with her past, and wanting to learn more about the mother she doesn't remember, Mariska has made a remarkable documentary called "My Mom, Jane." I think that's where I start now, is looking that here's our mother. This little girl whose father died when she was three years old. And she was in the car with him. We start there with Jane, we start there with loss, and I go, "I know that one." Did you feel that early on, the sense of loss and longing? I think my whole life as a child, I did always feel separate. And of course, I didn't know about why I felt so separate, but I just knew that I was like on this island by myself. My whole life, I feel like I've had a hole in my heart. Just something has always been wrong, something has always been missing, something could never be filled. And there was always just this incredible sadness when I look back at the photos of me. There was a lot of frozen smiles. And I remember I had a big personality, and I was very happy. But when I got sad, I don't think my parents knew how to deal with it, so they would tell me to snap out of it, and that I was like a black cloud. And that was really rough for me because I learned quickly that there wasn't room for my sadness. And now I see it as it was too much for my dad. He had so much grief and so much pain and so much that he almost couldn't handle anymore. And so I learned very young to be the joybrainer, to be fun girl, to be just every room I walked into, light it up and make it better. And there came a big cost. It's exhausting. It's not only exhausting, but you betray yourself and you sacrifice yourself. And you become a people pleaser and you do everything for other people to keep them happy. And there's a lot of good things to do it too. But it's been a very beautiful journey of integration and unencumbering. My nervous system is utterly and completely different. And I just have so much more internal space for everything, for my family, for my children, for my creativity, for my acting, for my directing. And I just have a piece that I never had before. Making this film was one of the most liberating things that I've ever done because people said, oh, it's so personal. I can't believe how vulnerable you are. But our vulnerability is our greatest strength and our greatest connector. And so in telling the story, I don't feel vulnerable. I feel free and I feel like there's an invisible string with everyone because we all have a story. And you never know what somebody else carries. I was trying to reach out across that divide and say, who are you? Who was the woman behind the pose? Why did she make these decisions? Who was the woman that made these choices? And why? So it was a very interesting journey this film, but also to couple of that with the morning, the longing, the yearning, but also the kind of embarrassment and shame and then wishing that my mom was something else and the complication with her voice. That was a really big thing to me. The voice which she put on is not what she was. It wasn't who she was, but also I was trying to connect to something real. So when I heard that voice, it was just like, it was just like, you're not getting in. There's no getting in. And that was one of the most profound gifts in the archival film. I would see these moments that I've never seen before and hear her in her lower register and in her true, authentic self, just talking normally and go, there you are, there you are. And it was sacred. It was holy. It was everything that I wanted. Your mom was three years old and in a car when her father died of a heart attack and then you were in the car three years old when your mom was killed in a car crash. I just find that staggering and truly like remarkable. And that's why when I was 34, I was convinced that was the year that I was going to. That was the age your mom was when she died. My mom died at 34 and when I was 34, I got in a motorcycle accident, a car hit me at a stop sign. And I remember I went flying through the air and when you're in an accident like that, everything slows down and it was so slow and I remember going, wow, it's really happening. I'm going to die right now. Same as my mom. I was at peace about it and after that accident when I landed and I was fine, was really the sort of aha moment that my whole life changed in what way separated from her and said I'm not my mother and I don't carry that karma with me. It was very freeing time and everything sort of changed and my outlook changed and I think I got a renewed sense of clarity and seeing possibility in a new way. Was it both surviving an accident but also living past the age that your mom had been? You always thought 34 was going to be it. Definitely. I actually, I think in a way manifested the accident and I don't really have the words for it. But I just think it's no accident that I was 34 and I had this experience and that's what changed it. That's what broke it and that kind of fear base that was running me really. I had a lot of PTSD growing up and dissociation from the car accident and I didn't know what it was. From when you were three years old? Yeah, because I was left in the car and there's been a few times when I've been in cars or in certain situations that I definitely got activated. Some strangers took your siblings out of the car. On the side of the road, put them to the hospital and then one of your brothers said, "Where's my baby sister?" And you were still in the vehicle? Yeah, under the passenger seat. Do you remember that? I don't. Thank God. But my body does. My body definitely does. And I had a lot of that and I didn't know what it was and so I used to override my feelings, just override grief and if I got activated I would just like keep moving. And I know that. Yeah. And then I realized that's not sustainable. And I had this really amazing therapist, amazing and we talk about a lot of things and then anytime we would go near the accident or when my mom died, I would seriously go, "Look, I'm so sorry. I was so tired. I didn't sleep last night." And I would start to close my eyes and almost like a narcoleptic fall asleep. And she said, "Well, that's your sleepy part coming in." And I started one. You had no idea you would do that. No, I listen, I work 16 hours a day, I don't sleep well, and I am really tired. But she said, I find it interesting that it only happens when we get close to this. And it's just like a wound, right? If somebody goes near you, you pull it back. And this was my defense mechanism and my survival skill. So just like I don't remember the accident, which is my body's survival mechanism. And so as we worked on it, she started giving me tools to sort of ask those parts that would fall asleep to step aside. It's somatic work. And it was life changing. And I didn't fall asleep anymore. And I've had some pretty profound experiences with that kind of work, where another time my body actually fell asleep. You know when your foot falls asleep or your leg falls asleep, my whole body fell asleep like that. And that was insane. After when it stops, you can actually feel like trauma leaving the body. I'm sure you've read the book, the body keeps the score and how trauma gets stuck in the body if we don't release it. And so I've done so much of that work. We're going to take a quick break. Coming up, I talk with Mariska about the discovery she made about her father, Mickey Hargote, and about his death in 2006. Our last words to each other and he kept saying to me was, "Mariska, always, always." I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life Podcast. We're going to talk about rethinking how we die. How we think about death in the first place greatly informs how we live. Our guest is Dr. BJ Miller. He's a hospice and palliative care physician. We are aging as a people. This is a worldwide phenomenon that we are aging in therefore getting closer to the end of life on some level as a group. It's not at all surprising that you'll see a revving up of interest, services, and also sort of anxiety that pushes us away from the subject and makes us cling to life. Listen to Chasing Life streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts. You were just family storage unit that you family hadn't been to since 1969. What was it like for you going into there? Crazy. I was so excited and afraid not knowing what I would find and the first day was thrilling and lonely at the same time and then the second time when I said to my siblings, "Please, guys, come, come." And we just had so much fun. There's all the, you know, the press books and all those, I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those things and, you know, listen, when she died, unfortunately, it was a very chaotic time and so a lot of things were taken and sold off, stolen. I remember it was years ago and I, somebody called me and they had my mother's charm bracelet and so I had to buy it from them and it was such an interesting thing because you're like, "How crazy is this? I'm buying something." But in all fairness to them, they bought it. So I was like, "I get it, that's fair." But to have it back was so deeply meaningful because they were the charms. One of the charms had my name on it and my brother's name is on it, my sister's named on it and all the things that she did and this is your life and all these great things. And over the years, people have been very generous and sent me some things or offered to sell me things and some of the things are meaningful, you know, coats and pieces of clothing, costume jewelry, earrings. You got your mom's piano back. Well, that is the miracle. From Engelberg Humperding. I did it, maybe. And I was trying to find it from years really. It was obviously one of the greatest days of my life. Talk about integration, right? Talk about a dream come true and everything felt right in the world. I had become sort of obsessed with her musical talents and the fact that she played the violin and the piano so beautifully and so being able to see this thing, this piece that showed me this whole other side of her that connected me to her so deeply and sort of fulfilled all these dreams and through the making of this movie, I found this whole other person that I didn't know existed. What a gift. And also I'd spent my life separating myself being a tomboy. I don't want to be that. I don't want to be sexy. I'm not that. I'm serious and I'm going to play a cop for my whole life and to go on this journey of seeing the similarities. And again, being able to integrate her because I had exercised her from my being and said, yeah, that's we're different and we don't have a lot in common and I I'm doing other things and I'm doing it a different way and a lot of it's in reaction to the choices you made. And here I am now sitting in this cozy place that I never had going I'm like you in so many ways that continue that the like world continues to show me and even photos of her like seeing photos of her making these faces that I make or a photo where she looks my son looks exactly like her my eldest son and when he was a baby used to go and that was his stick and we didn't know where he came from but he'd go he was the cutest thing and then I see all these photos of her doing that. I mean, just little weird things like that but the fact that she was so had this hunger and ambition and she loved kids the way I do. But my whole life and I'm sure you had this Anderson was people would say what's it like to be and you go I don't have anything to compare it to. This is the only thing I know and for me I was so young but it was just all the ghosts and all the things and now I go like this to all of it. I used to think I was so different than my mom and now I realize oh my god I am so much like my mom and it's a lovely thing. Yeah and when you grow up feeling so alone and then all of a sudden you realize that you're not and that's been also the other gift. I felt like it modeled myself after my father. You were 25 when you learned really for the first time that he was not your biological father. He was everything to me so strong and so clear and so loving and so committed and determined and everything that he taught me about working hard and being excellent and how it takes that much more whatever you're doing it takes that much more to be excellent to win and all these different things that he said over the years that I've integrated into myself that when I found out at 25 that he was not my biological father that undid me almost worse almost worse because that's when I felt oh I am really alone here like really alone. Your dad had told you not to read the books. The books that were out there about your mom. Yeah I mean he literally said don't read those they're sensationalistic bullshit and and they were it was right but I guess he you know he knew and he was just like they were tabloid he was horrible cruel unfair one note you know it's just not journalism in any way I mean if you're gonna write a book about somebody get it right so I never did and I'm so glad that I didn't and even though I was raised in Hollywood in West Hollywood I really didn't have a very like Hollywood we were just away from all of it the day that I feel like I became an adult was the day that I confronted my father when I saw the picture of Nelson and I drove up to my father's house which where he was literally building me a house house that for a metaphor he was actually building me a house and I just started going after him and going why didn't you tell me how could you not tell me you lied to me you lied to me and because my dad used to talk about the facts just the facts he was burly into the facts and the way he denied it and the way he said what are you talking about you look exactly like my grandfather you're my daughter you're my daughter and in this moment I went oh I have to take care of you and he couldn't I don't want to say handle it that feels wrong he couldn't like this was the new reality this is where we were and I knew where it came from and the love that it came from that I went I got it and I said okay dad sorry I just thought and we never spoke of it again well he did say a couple times remember when you thought that crazy thing but I loved my father so much and he loved me and he was so devoted to me that I didn't want to betray him in any way because he never admitted to me that he wasn't my biological father. It says a lot about you in that moment of life-changing realization, understandably anger, confusion, everything that you would see that in him and realize, oh, I'm an adult now and I see this and he needs this. I could feel his pain. He couldn't really talk about her without crying. I think there was so much left on said, there was so much pain that he witnessed and the fact that he couldn't change her or help her at the end in the dark days. He loved her so much and he couldn't do anything about it. I just wanted to like love him back as devotedly and committedly and lovingly as he had. How he'd given me his life. And so it was a beautiful moment of maturity and me going, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And here's a guy from Hungary who didn't believe in therapy and when I said I'm going to therapy, he's like therapy's bullshit. You got to know who you are and where you're going and where you came from. That's what he would say. You got to know where you came from, who you are and where you're going. And you don't get married. He goes, find out where you're going and then who's coming with you. And you know all this great stuff. So I go, I know who I'm dealing with. He's not going to get in there and start talking about his feelings. You get up, you pick yourself up by your bootstraps and you keep moving. And that's what he did. I healed myself a different way. He died in 2006. Yeah. He died two months after my son was born. But he got to meet him and my son is named August Mikloš after him. And I was in the hospital and he was in the hospital at the same time on different floors. Yeah, he had multiple myloma. And so but we were there together. He must have been so thrilled to meet your son. Yeah, it was. And again, with my father, one of the greatest gifts that I have with grief and death, we got to say goodbye. It's such a beautiful way that he just lives in here now. And our yeah, our last words to each other. And he kept saying to me was, "Barška, always, always." So now, you know, I just am so grateful for that. And so he used to leave like pomegranates on my front door and we loved Bogenvia. And I had a lot of Bogenvia in my house. And so whenever I'm in LA in Bogenvia, you know, beautiful red leaf falls, I know it's him. And there are all these little signs, little things that he's to do, drop cherries off at my house. And again, pomegranates. And so those things just remind me and red tailhawks. And but I'm one of the last things my mom said to me was, always and forever. I would get up and hug you right now. But that's the gift when you get to say goodbye. Yeah. You know, it makes a big difference. You said, I spent 35 years trying to hide that story to honor my dad. But something that I've also realized that sometimes keeping a secret doesn't honor anyone. And it's taking me a long time to figure that out. There's so many people who have these secrets. Yeah. And it was very painful for me to carry that secret. Growing up thinking, why didn't Nelson claim me? I don't matter. I'm not good enough. He didn't want me. Everyone lied to me. I'm an accident. I shouldn't be here. You had all those thoughts. Not great for the self-esteem, feeling that you're an accident. And that my mother left me in a mess. So much anger. So much rage. And it is very painful to be angry at a dead person. And so it was leading me in a mess. And so when I was, I think 29 or 30, I went to Colorado to take care of my grandmother because my grandfather was having an operation. And so I went into her closet and I opened up the shoebox. And I found the letter, my mother wrote to my grandmother that explained everything. The letter that said, what should I do? I love Mickey and I love Nelson. And I'm so excited about this Italian maybe, but I don't know what to do. So that was the first moment when I went, I had empathy for her to go and that she was talking to me from heaven. That was the moment, the first that I went, okay, I'm not alone in this somehow. You know, because I've always been somebody who's looking for the signs, looking for the signs and to be open for the signs. And so after that, I went to Vegas and found Nelson. And what Nelson said to me when he first told me that night when I asked him about my father was that when they spoke, my dad said, Nelson, you don't have to tell me who the father of this baby is. And Nelson said to Mickey, you're the father of this baby because you're the one that wakes up with her in the middle of the night. You're the one that takes care of her. You're the one that will be there when she cries. And that was so beautiful and so extraordinary because they did have an agreement. And I think it was so honorable if Nelson never to say anything, but the fact that there was this acknowledgement between the two men was so beautiful. It was truly extraordinary to me and, you know, noble in that way. And the irony is, I feel like everyone made the right decision for me. And I have nothing but gratitude. I look at how my father loved me and I was his daughter. I was his daughter. And I felt like that. I'm the one who's most like him in my family. I mean, all the kids are like him, but I've really adopted it in a way. And then I look at Nelson, who I used to again, just say, are you not thinking about me? Do you not know about me? Do you not care? How can you not see me and see that we look exactly alike? How can you not send me an anonymous birthday card? I just wanted some acknowledgement, but there was never any. And then I remember my stepmother was so beautiful because the day that I said, Mom, did you know, did you know? And she said, very elegantly, I might add, all I know is that your father feels that your his daughter. And I thought that was so gorgeous because that was true. And so now, again, of course, all my life, I've had to make peace with my story, but I look at it now. I look at you. I look at people like us that are driven by empathy and compassion and connection. And our past are what made us the way we are now. So I do look at it like a gift. We all have secrets. We all have skeletons in our closet. But if we look at them with disciplined curiosity, many times we can get to the other side, disciplined curiosity. I haven't heard that. But that's how I felt because there was curiosity, but it was fearful curiosity in judgmental curiosity at the beginning going, how could you do that? How could you do that? To all of them, I said that. I do think though that moment when you can look at your parent or whomever it is with empathy because she, you know, it's so easy to look at things parents do with anger. But when you realize like, well, she didn't know how to be a parent. She didn't have a parent. And she's doing really the best she can. That's exactly right. It's just this little kind of wonderful thing to be able as an adult to have eternal feelings for your parent. My mom, she didn't need my anger. She needed my help. And I have tremendous empathy for her and always have. And I'm glad I, I saw that. And that's, and that's, um, it helps with it. For me, it helps with the grief, like the grief I feel over my mom's death. It's very much impacted by the empathy that I had for her for a long time. But I love that you came to know your mom. Me too. And introduce her to the world in a way. I love that I know her too. She was pretty remarkable. Yeah. Is there something you've learned in your grief that would be helpful for others? Yeah. Yeah, there is. For me, I remember when I was young and I would read all theories. And they'd say, when will it stop? The pain is never ending. And I remember thinking it's bottomless well. And I'll never get over it. And I'll always be this sad. I'll always be this sad. And that's when you lose hope. And then I learned to practice tolerating it. And when we can tolerate our pain, that's when it dissipates. And so I practice that a lot of saying, "I'm strong enough to go through this." And that's what changed everything for me really, is that I would practice when I felt sad instead of avoiding it. And putting on the frozen smile, I'd be like, "I'm really sad. I'm really sad." And I would sit in it and I would cry. But when we cry, we feel better afterwards. And something happens chemically even in our body where the grief leaves. And so I've had a lot of practice of sitting in my grief and sitting in my trauma and learning how to talk to myself, but mostly learning to tolerate pain. And every single time when I sit in it and lean toward it is when it starts to dissipate. And so now when I'm sad, I go, "Wow, I'm really sad right now." And I give it to myself. I don't put on a smile and I don't pretend. I cry a lot. And I like it because it's true and it's authentic. It doesn't make me weak. We're just human beings. We're trying to figure out the human being was designed that way. So I think that when we do cry, little piece of the grief goes. And you know, the only way out is through. And I think that if we can tolerate little bits at a time and lean into it and be kind to ourselves and gentle with ourselves without the judgment like we would to somebody else. What's that old thing of taking care of your inner child? How we would to someone else? Give them a hug and say, "I'm right here." And so when I get sad, I say that, "I'm right here with you. I got you." And I do now. You have that compassion for yourself. And you also, I think so much of healing comes when somebody bears witness to you and says, "I'm right here with you." You don't have to say anything. You have to be with them and invest in them and say, "I'm right here with you." And you are not alone because the biggest fear in our grief is that we're alone in it and we'll be alone forever. And I think that's the biggest fear of being a human being. I was like, "I will be out of community. I will be out of connection as human beings. We need connection." And so I think that our grief and our collective grief and our trauma connects us to each other and makes it all more bearable because the fact is, so we all are carrying something. We all have something. But as I've talked about mine, the load gets lighter every time. The load gets lighter. But I think again, there's so much healing that comes from having somebody bear witness to you and say, "Whatever it is, I believe you. I love you. I'm just here with you." And if we can learn to say that to ourselves, then that's the jackpot. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. Thank you for having me. It's really lovely. Mariska's documentary, "My mom Jane is available to stream on HBO Max." And she's making her Broadway debut now in the play, "Every Brilliant Thing," which runs until July 5. If you have thoughts you'd like to share about my conversation with Mariska or about your own experiences with grief, we'd love to hear from you. You can leave a comment on our grief community page at senen.com/all there is, or leave us a voicemail at 404-827-1805. On Thursday, June 4th, I hope you join me at 9.15 p.m. from my streaming show All There Is Live. You can watch it on senen.com/all there is. It streams their life for free. It'll also be free to stream on our community page for a week. On an upcoming episode of the podcast, my conversation with the actress Amanda Pete. Last year she was diagnosed with breast cancer and the following day her father died, then her mother, just a few months later. It's weird sometimes coming to New York because they were both here for so long, and when I come in and I see the skyline, there's a funny kind of emptiness and weirdness that neither of them are here. It's very, and a weird childlike feeling of like being untethered, like an orphan. Like, where's the person who'd walk through fire for me? Amanda Pete on an upcoming episode of the podcast. Thanks for listening. Subscribe now, visit CNN.com/allaccess.