Mariska Hargitay has helped people share their stories for years on TV and through her foundation, and now, she wants to share hers.
The trailer for โMy Mom Jayne,โ the โLaw & Order: SVUโ starโs documentary about her late mother, Jayne Mansfield, aired exclusively June 3 on TODAY.
The HBO film, which premiered in May at the Cannes Film Festival, is also the first project under Hargitayโs newly launched production company, Mighty Entertainment.
Hargitay narrates the trailer, which opens with black-and-white footage of Mansfield before jumping to video of Hargitay opening boxes and sorting through memorabilia about her mom.
โIโve spent my whole life distancing myself from my mother, Jayne Mansfield, the sex symbol,โ she says, as racy images of Mansfield pop up on screen.
Old news clips and photos document the Hollywood bombshellโs rise to fame.
โI use my pinup-type publicity to get my foot in the door,โ Mansfield says in one of the videos.
As an image of Olivia Benson โ Hargitayโs famous โSVUโ character โ appears, the Emmy winner explains that her motherโs path to stardom made her want to carve a much different career for herself in the entertainment industry.
โBut I want to understand her now,โ Hargitay says.
She then reflects on losing her parents, saying she has no memories of her mom, who died in a car accident in 1967 when Hargitay was 3 years old. Hargitay and two of her brothers, Zoltan and Mickey Jr., were in the car at the time of the accident. Their father, Hungarian bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, raised them and died in 2006.
Hargitay says sheโs never talked to her siblings, including the oldest โ Jayne Marie, whom Mansfield had with her high school boyfriend turned husband at 17 โ about their experiences with their mom.
The trailer shows Hargitay, who also serves as director of the film, respectively settling her brothers and sister in for interviews.
โAnything you ask, you know Iโm there for you,โ Mickey Jr. says.
โYou have all these memories, and Iโm envious of that,โ Hargitay expresses in another scene to Jayne Marie, who was 16 when Mansfield died.
โIn the beginning, I had her to myself,โ Jayne Marie says over archival video footage of her with her mom. โSheโd take me everywhere.โ
Mansfield, who spoke to the press often and especially loved her fans, took her kids almost everywhere she went on the road.
โWhen youโre a kid, you donโt know anything else,โ Mickey Jr. says. โThis is life.โ
Zoltan says in the trailer that their motherโs playful on-camera persona, which included a put-on, breathy voice, was โactually a character.โ
โThe public pays to see me a certain way,โ Mansfield says in an old clip.
โI looked the other way because I knew she was really smart,โ Mickey Jr. says of his mom, who was fluent in multiple languages and played violin and piano.
โAt home, she was just Jayne,โ Jayne Marie says.
โIโve heard things that are really ugly,โ Hargitay says.
โI donโt know that I want to know those ugly things,โ says Tony Cimber, Hargitayโs half brother, whom Mansfield had with ex-husband and director Matt Cimber.
Hargitay revealed publicly for the first time in a May 2025 interview with Vanity Fair that her biological father isnโt Mickey Hargitay, but Italian singer Nelson Sardelli. The topic also appears to be touched upon near the end of the trailer.
โI pulled out this picture, couldnโt believe what I was seeing. It was like the floor fell out from underneath me,โ Hargitay says.
โWhy didnโt he tell me?โ Hargitay asks brother Zoltan.
She told Vanity Fair she once confronted their father about Sardelli but said he denied the claim, and she never mentioned Sardelli to him again.
Thatโs just one layer to the documentaryโs narrative, which has a singular, larger focus for Hargitay.
โReclaiming our family story โ that is what this is about for me,โ Hargitay says over clips of her siblings coming together in a garage full of their motherโs memories, โbecause sheโs a part of me.โ
โI want to know her as Jayne โ my mom, Jayne,โ she says, as the video fades to black showing footage of Mansfield smiling and playing the piano.
โMy Mom Jayneโ will have its North American premiere June 13 at the Tribeca Festival. It will air June 27 on HBO at 8 p.m. ET and stream on Max.