“I Might Have Just Ruined It”: ‘Law & Order: SVU’s Allison Siko on Taking a “Swing” as Elliot Stabler’s Daughter Kathleen and Snotting on Mariska Hargitay

Playing a fan-favorite character is always a good boost to the ego, but what could be said about Allison Siko, who has returned time and again to the Law & Order franchise, is that she expresses nothing but gratitude. Recently, Collider sat down with Siko in the wake of her most recent appearance as Kathleen Stabler, the second of Detective Elliot Stabler’s (Christopher Meloni) five children, in Law & Order: Organized Crime. Kathleen first debuted in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, appearing more than 30 times within the franchise, with Siko reprising the role from Season 3 on. Over the course of the interview below, Siko discusses what it was like returning to the character and how she prepared for the Kathleen-centric episode “Swing,” as well as the experience of working with Meloni, Ellen Burstyn, and Mariska Hargitay.

Allison Siko Prepped Big Time for Her Character’s Big “Swing” in ‘Law & Order: Organized Crime’

In the Law & Order: SVU Season 10 episode “Swing,” it’s revealed that Siko’s character, Kathleen Stabler, has been treating her undiagnosed bipolar disorder with drugs and alcohol. After a series of events lead to Kathleen’s arrest, she eventually seeks proper medical treatment for her disorder. While the episode itself is heavy, seeing a case hit so close to one of the main characters on the Special Victims Unit squad almost always results in a standout installment. The episode sees Elliot Stabler not only reconciling with the fact that his daughter has been arrested, but recognizing that, in order for Kathleen to have a shot at getting help and not prison time, a history of her mental illness has to be shown through Elliot’s mother, Bernadette Stabler, played by Burstyn. The Amanda Green-penned episode came after a subtle build-up, although Siko also credits the writers with “planting the seeds” for Kathleen’s arc in “Swing”:

“I had already done some reckless behavior. People like to remember the time I stole dad’s credit card and got the thigh tattoo, and all of a sudden I’m coming in with these high boots and short skirt, and I’m just like, ‘Why did you do this [to] my boyfriend?’ That kind of stuff.”

Siko only had just a few weeks to prepare once she signed on to return for “Swing.” “I got the heads-up about the episode right as I was about to film “Trials,” which I believe is the one with the boots and the thigh tattoo, etc. I started making the connection of, ‘Oh, this is probably to lead into that, cool. Nice to know.’ But at the time, I hadn’t done the research yet.” That quickly changed, with the support of director David Platt and acting coach Susan Batson at Siko’s disposal.

In addition to prepping for the actual acting, Siko says her BFA program at Rutgers taught her, “You do your research. You really dive into your characters. You want to know everything that you can. I had just learned you go to the library, you hit the books, you learn everything you can. So that’s what I did. I went to my local library. I went on Amazon. I was trying to find whatever I could find.” She ultimately stumbled across a documentary called Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive:

“That was really, really profoundly informative to see people talking in their natural life, and it’s a documentary. They’re not putting on a character, it’s just themselves.”

In addition to that prep work, Siko was also taking “normal people courses” at Rutgers, which led her to a psychology class. “I whipped that textbook back open, and I went to the bipolar section, and I was reading up all about the things from the clinical, scientific point of view. So [I was] trying to just absorb as much as I could.” Siko took all of those tools, “putting it all together in my own little actor cauldron and creating this idea of how I was going to play it.” But the actress was also methodical about the process, even with the short timeline she had to prep. “It was a lot of hard work in a short amount of time to then go through the script and be like, ‘Okay, where would this symptom that I read about in the abnormal psych textbook, where would that be showing up? How would I show that in a truthful and authenticated way?’” Eventually, the magnitude of the task settled over her:

“Because these were real people. People who actually are dealing with this, and I didn’t want to play a caricature. I didn’t want to make fun of anyone. The whole point was to authentically show what can happen to folks, how they can self-medicate if they’re not diagnosed, how it can be passed down through hereditary lines, entire communities when not treated, and then how things can and will get better with treatment, with support, with care and compassion. That was really, in my opinion, the whole point of the episode. And I’m so happy that, all these years later, people are still feeling the supportive effects of it.”

Allison Siko Reflects on Her First One-on-One Scene With Mariska Hargitay

Throughout her time on SVU, Siko has shared multiple scenes with Mariska Hargitay, who plays Captain Olivia Benson. In “Swing,” Siko, Hargitay, and Burstyn were all present for the pivotal scene with Kathleen in the holding cell, where Bernie details her own struggles with mental illness. Of filming that scene with Hargitay and Burstyn, Siko says, “It was heavily emotional. Mariska is in the background, just kind of standing there, but then she would come over and side-coach me and be like, ‘You’re doing great.’ And ‘Here’s how you could think about it.’ And I was like, ‘This isn’t even your job, but you’re amazing. Thank you so much.'” Siko adds that the Organized Crime episode “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of” was the first time she got the chance to act with Hargitay one-on-one. “That was such a gift,” Siko says. “And I wanted to be prepared, and I wanted to do it well.”

However, during the scene where Kathleen seeks out Olivia’s help to lead an intervention for Elliot, things got a bit messy. “So we’re grabbing hands in the scene, and I’m going, ‘Ah, please, you have to help us.’ Well, when I cry, I just — my biomechanical suit of being a human, when I cry, I drip a lot of snot,” Siko confesses. “Unfortunately, I just become a faucet.” The admission can only mean one thing: “Everything from my face just wants to go out. So on one of the takes where I was really crying, I was trying to bring it as hard as I could. Not only were the tears coming, the snot was coming. And the snot, of course, as it was gonna do, plopped right onto my hand. I wish this could go a different way, but you know what? We’re committed. We’re doing it. Let’s go.’ So God love her. We took a take, and she had to grab my hand, and my hand was covered in snot, and at the end of the take, I was like, ‘I am so sorry. Does anybody have hand sanitizer? Can we get hand sanitizer, please? I’m so sorry.’”

Much to Siko’s relief, Hargitay took the moment in stride. “She was like, ‘No, no, you did what you needed to do.’ So it’s stuff like that, where she’s a real one. She understands herself, she gets it. But at the same time, I was just like, wow, to go from never having a one-on-one scene with her to then snotting all over her hand. I hope I get this chance again, but I might have just ruined it. I don’t know, but that’s the beauty and craziness of being an actor.”

Don’t Ask Allison Siko To Pick a Favorite Law & Order Episode

In addition to her experience working with Hargitay, Siko touched on working with her on-screen dad, Christopher Meloni. “I had done many [episodes] with Chris, and Chris is wonderful, and having that father-daughter bond is such a gift.” Much like Hargitay, Siko explains, Meloni stepped into the role of a side acting coach. “Chris, many times, has been like, ‘Oh, hey, the way that your hand was there, if you were on stage, that would be great. But for film, you might want to try this.'” As for working with her on-screen grandma, Siko tells me Burstyn is a “magnificent and beautiful, beautiful soul inside and out,” and that she was actually entranced watching the actress during the holding cell scene, which she refers to as a “master class” on the day. “I had to be reminded when the camera wasn’t on me, and it was just on her, they were like, ‘Allison, stop watching her. Keep acting. She needs your responses to be how it was when the camera was on you.’ And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.'”

When asked about which Law & Order moments are her favorites, from the one-on-one scenes with Burstyn or Meloni or any of her other scene partners to a big chaotic family dinner scene like in Organized Crime‘s Season 4, Episode 4, “The Last Supper,” Siko simply responds, “I enjoy working.” As she explains, “I’m an only child, so I’ve not had as many chaotic, big lots of siblings family moments, whereas I’ve gotten to play out some doozies on TV, and that’s been fun and exciting and intriguing.” The episode is a full Stabler family affair, bringing in Burstyn, Meloni, and Siko, along with Dean Norris playing Elliot’s older brother Randall Stabler, and Michael Trotter as Elliot’s younger brother Joseph Stabler Jr. along with Kathleen’s four other siblings: Maureen (Autumn Mirassou), Elizabeth (Kaitlyn Davidson), Richard (Jeffrey Scaperrotta), and Eli (Nicky Torchia).

Siko, who originally landed the role of Kathleen in the Season 3 SVU episode “Popular,” has now returned to play the character again and again across two different Law & Order shows. “I enjoy working when they call, and I can put Kathleen’s shoes and attire on and inhabit her again. It’s always a pleasure and a gift.” As an aspiring middle-school-aged actor at the time, Siko says all she’d auditioned for with SVU up to that point was basically the equivalent of “Sorry, I didn’t see Jimmy in math class. I gotta go.” After she was cast as Kathleen Stabler, however, “I got to come back more and more and more, and this was just all a wonderful gift that I was never expecting. It started to snowball, where, pretty much every year, I’d get a call or two, and then as I was getting older, and they were creating more of the storylines to preemptively set the groundwork for “Swing.” It’s just a fabulous bounty of riches I never even saw coming.”

As someone who initially began starring in the Law & Order franchise as a middle-schooler, Siko can’t stress the most gratifying part of her time as Kathleen Stabler enough: “To see these people over all the different sections of my life while growing up has definitely informed who I am as an artist and also who I am as a person. It’s such a beautiful gift to have grown up around Mariska Hargitay, to have grown up around Christopher Meloni, to have grown up more so now than before, but still to be growing up around Ellen Burstyn. Just these amazing figures. They’re not just figures, they’re humans, and they have beautiful gifts that they share with us on this weekly basis, on these shows.”

Whether what’s ahead is a rom-com or more appearances as Kathleen, Siko, who has also spent a lot of time in the theater, seems game. “There’s lots of beautiful independent work that’s coming down the pipeline that I’ve been auditioning for, and so any of those would be very fun to sink my teeth into. Just to have more actual footage, a representation of the comedy that I like doing would be great. But if more Kathleen comes down the pike, and she’s gotta be crying a bit more. I won’t say no to that.” The fans, who have reveled in Siko’s recent guest appearances on social media week after week, would seem to agree.