What Mariska Hargitay Said at ‘My Mom Jayne’ Premiere at Carnegie Hall

As the lights dimmed inside Carnegie Hall Friday night, Mariska Hargitay dazzled from her seat in the heart of the iconic venue as she took in the applause from the crowd.

The actor made her feature film directorial debut with “My Mom Jayne,” an HBO Original documentary about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, at New York City’s historic concert hall as part of the Tribeca Festival.

Hargitay not only appears in the documentary, she also serves as director and producer, and she was surrounded by her family and friends on the big night.

Before the screening, she posed in a glamorous gown paired with a shimmering wrap and white gloves. In between interviews on the red carpet, she ran over to take photos with a rotation of loved ones, including her siblings, whom she interviewed for the film.

She also posed with celebrity pals, including Cher and Jamie Lee Curtis, as well as her “Law & Order” co-stars from over the years, including Christopher Meloni, Ice-T, Kelli Giddish and Peter Scanavino.

Scanavino told TODAY.com at the event that when he first saw a rough cut of the documentary, he was “just totally blown away” by the project.

“Years ago, she started talking about it, but there’s always things — when you deal with something like her mother, you don’t want to pry,” he said. “I always got the sense that it was kind of a very somewhat private thing for her.”

Curtis, who’s been open about her love for her new friend Hargitay, was equally as supportive of Hargitay’s personal project.

“I think any time we can see women step up and out and into the light of their truth, and do it with grace and humor and love and beauty, that’s a message that I think does translate,” Curtis told TODAY.com at the premiere event.

“She’s been carrying her family story for a long time, and it’s time for her to shed it in this gorgeous documentary and now step free as an artist,” she added. “Now we have a filmmaker.”

Hargitay said she was “very afraid” to make the film during a Q&A moderated by Griffin Dunne after the screening of the documentary.

“Learning to lean into the sharp edges and tolerate the uncomfortable feelings and sort of breathe through it, and then coming out the other side to this gorgeous support, these beautiful humans, all these people that were just trying to do the best that they can, and they did,” she said. “I look at it now, and I’m so grateful for the choices that were made for me.”

In the film, Hargitay opens up about the moment in her 20s when she learned her biological father was not Mickey Hargitay, who raised her, but an Italian singer named Nelson Sardelli, whom Mansfield had an affair with in the process of divorcing Mickey Hargitay.

Mariska Hargitay met Sardelli when she was 30 but continued to keep the secret about her parentage until now.

At the Carnegie Hall Q&A, she expressed her gratitude for being able to be the one to share her journey about such a delicate topic in her own time.

“But what I find so amazing is that this story has not gone out there, and it was mine to tell,” she said.

One constant in the film is Mansfield’s love of music. The 1950s Hollywood starlet played piano and the violin, including in some of her television appearances, like on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”