'Law & Order: SVU' star Mariska Hargitay explains why crime shows are ‘actually calming'

foxnews.com:

Mariska Hargitay shared her thoughts on the enduring success of "Law & Order." Ahead of being honored at the 33rd Annual Colleagues Spring Luncheon, the 59-year-old actress explained why she believes the police and legal procedural franchise has dominated the network TV landscape for over three decades.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, the "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" star credited franchise creator/producer Dick Wolf's "great writing." "Dick Wolf is truly a visionary," she said Tuesday. "And I think that's a very singular thing to be a true visionary who understands our culture in a very deep way, but also understands it's sort of ironic that a crime show would be actually calming in a way to our nervous system, knowing that somebody is out there taking care of it." She continued, "That our voices are heard and there are people that are on it.

So that is it." "It's a very sort of interesting dichotomy," Hargitay added. "Because you think about a crime show, which normally should sort of upset your nervous system, actually can settle it down because of that." Hargitay also weighed in on the enormous popularity of true crime and explained why she believes that the genre has such widespread appeal. "I think that we're all fascinated with the human condition," the Emmy Award winner said. "We don't understand how people can do the things that they do." She continued, "But it's a very deep question, which is we are very complex beings, and we all have a lot of parts, and we're all capable of a lot of things.That's why working on ourselves and integrating ourselves and integrating our shadow and our light is one of the most important things we can do in our evolution." "So I think that's the key to it — is that.