Just because she’s senator of the state home to all things Hollywood doesn’t mean Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is up on all her celebrities. She had an embarrassing moment Wednesday when she met actress Mariska Hargitay.
“[Sen.] Boxer doesn’t know who I am,” the Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning actress recalled to us Wednesday night at the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship gala, where she was honored.
“She said, ‘And what do you do?’ So I told her nicely I was on television,” Hargitay said she replied. “But then she pronounced my name wrong,” she said with a laugh about their encounter.
Hargitay was met with that question at a meeting earlier in the day with her home-state senator following a hearing on sexual violence that occurs during armed conflict (an issue she told Yeas & Nays she became aware of from an episode on her show “Law & Order: SVU”).
One place, though, where we bet everyone knew Hargitay’s name was last Saturday at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. But for her, the biggest names were those in the new adminstration.
“You can’t take your eyes off of [Michelle Obama],” Hargitay said, who herself wore a form-fitting, black lace two-piece dress with sky-high heels, as she gushed to us about the dinner. “I mean I look at Rahm Emanuel and think about all these geniuses running our country,” she continued.
And how did this year’s compare with past ones?
“This was the first one I cared about,” the veteran guest to NBC told us. “[George] Bush was not funny, and he can’t speak well.”
Photo: Paul Morigi
