Keke Palmer Reveals the Act of Kindness Mariska Hargitay Extended to Her When She Guest Starred on SVU

Even Keke Palmer gets starstruck sometimes!

In a video with BuzzFeed, Palmer, 31, played with puppies and answered a variety of questions while promoting her new book, Master of Me. When asked if she has ever been starstruck by a celebrity encounter, one memory immediately came to mind.

“Honestly, it really shouldn’t shock the real ones — the real ones know — Olivia Benson, yeah, America’s detective, also known as Mariska Hargitay,” she said, referring to Hargitay’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit character. “I grew up watching her show and living for her show all my life as a kid, and I got the opportunity to work with her when I was 12 years old.”

In her SVU episode, which aired in 2005, Palmer was a victim of child abduction following Hurricane Katrina, and Olivia Benson saved her. Palmer joked that, in the moment, she “forgot how to act” and became “speechless” because she was such a big fan of Hargitay’s.

“I could not believe that the woman that has saved all these young girls and these young boys was here to save me,” she explained. “I was in deep shock for most of the scene. I told my mom, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t talk. This is Olivia Benson,’ and Sharon [Palmer] was like, ‘Keke, you got to get through.’ So I got through the scene.”

After lunch, Palmer said Hargitay, 60, invited her and the other child guest star to go to “hang out” with her in her trailer, and Palmer excitedly said yes.

“We go in and she has boxes and boxes and boxes of all these goodies, because, obviously she’s Olivia Benson,” she recalled. “Everybody loves her. She had all these fancy bath products and just all this beautiful stuff that girls love, and she gave it all to us both. We walk out of her room with all these baskets of things and it was just like the sweetest memory ever.”

Nearly 20 years later, Palmer said she still thinks about that day, and recently even reached out to Hargitay on Instagram, not expecting a reply back.

“I DM’d her,” Palmer said. “I was like, ‘Mariska, you might not remember me, but I just want you to know, I still love you and have such great memories when I met you.’ And she’s like, ‘Keke, of course I remember you. I love you so much. I’m so proud of everything you’ve been doing.’ And it was just a good little moment. But you know, Olivia Benson, she’s always going to get it.”

“And Stabler, how could you leave the show? It’s crazy,” she added, referring to Christopher Meloni’s character, Detective Elliot Stabler, who left the show in 2011 after 12 seasons.

SVU is one of the longest-running shows on television, currently on its 26th season after first airing in 1999. Hargitay has been the star of the drama since its inception, making her the only cast member who has remained on the show for the entire 25 years.

In September, the actress opened up to Interview Magazine about the impact of her time on the hit NBC series, saying it’s “been a process” to learn to separate herself from the dark subject matter.

“When I started the show, I wasn’t aware of how deeply it would go into me,” she explained in a conversation with Selena Gomez. “My husband Peter [Hermann] is always like, anytime I go anywhere, my first question is, ‘What’s the crime rate here?’ So it’s on the brain.”

“There’s been times when I didn’t know how to protect myself, and I think I was definitely a victim of secondary trauma from being inundated with these stories and knowing that they were true,” she continued. “Those were the parts that I didn’t know how to metabolize, just because of the sheer volume of it. That’s also why I started Joyful Heart [Foundation], so I would feel like, well, at least I’m doing something about it.”

Hargitay started her non-profit in 2004 with the mission to “transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, support survivors’ healing, and end this violence forever,” according to its website.

“I learned more about sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, than I ever had thought about,” she shared. “And quite frankly, before I started the show, I didn’t know a lot about it. When I read the script, I thought the show was so progressive, that they were willing to take on this subject matter.”