Many of today’s stars have wrestled with their status as nepo babies, but few have had quite as long a journey as Mariska Hargitay. “I’ve spent my whole life distancing myself from my mother,” the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star says in the trailer of her feature-length directorial debut, My Mom Jayne. “Her career made me want to do it differently, but I want to understand her now.”
She’s talking about legendary actress and “sex symbol” Jayne Mansfield, who died in a car accident at just 34 years old, leaving five children behind. Hargitay, her daughter, was three. In the trailer, the actress shares that she has no memories of her mother and has never talked to her siblings about their experiences with her. Now, nearly six decades after Mansfield’s death, she’s finally opening that door.
“The film follows Mariska as she seeks to answer her long-held questions about her mother and integrate the truths she uncovers into her own sense of self,” an HBO synopsis reads, in part. “As she explores the complexities behind who Jayne Mansfield was in public, she reckons with the persona that Jayne created, but was later desperate to escape. Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings, who each has their own memories of their mother, and an excavation of the photographs, letters, and cherished belongings Jayne left behind, Mariska assembles a new picture of the extraordinary, complex woman whose image and legacy she resisted for so many years. With courage and vulnerability, Mariska engages in the process of opening herself to a new, hard-won collection of memories—and a deeper level of truth.” In addition to Hargitay’s interviews with her siblings, the film will also incorporate archival footage from Mansfield’s talk show appearances and performances from the ’50s and ’60s, as well as “striking personal footage.”
“Reclaiming our family story, that is what this is about for me,” Hargitay says at the end of the trailer. “Because she’s a part of me. I want to know her as Jayne. My mom, Jayne.”
