$850,000 an episode: what TV's top cop takes home

Mariska Hargitay takes home nearly $850,000 for every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, according to Variety.

The actress, 62, has played Olivia Benson for more than 25 years and has been an executive producer on the show since season 15. Seasons usually run 20 to 25 episodes, so that adds up to millions a year.

The figure came out as the show reached a milestone almost nobody in TV gets near: its 600th episode, airing on NBC on Thursday, Nov. 12.

Episode 600, titled Obedience, brought back Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler, Benson's old partner, for a guest appearance. Mariska shared a set selfie with him in September with a two-word caption: "WHO DAT". Fans took the hint.

She didn't just star in it. She directed it too. "They just asked me to direct the 600th!" she said on The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast in April. "It's crazy."

"It's about a woman having her voice and being submissive or subservient in a way, or giving up our power or our instinct, and that's an important story to tell," she told Variety. "Because so many women identify with that."

'I wanted to go home'

The months before the shoot were a blur. In September she won two Emmys for her documentary My Mom Jayne. The following week she hosted the Emmys.

Then she flew back to New York and started filming another SVU episode the very next day. Four days after that wrapped, production on episode 600 began.

So when the celebration dinner came around, she nearly skipped it. "I wanted to go home and go to bed," she told Variety.

She went anyway, with the cast and crew, creator Dick Wolf and Meloni. "It was one of the most extraordinary, meaningful nights, and unexpectedly so to me," she said.

Wolf opened the night by saying: "This has never happened, and it will never happen again."

Asked to give a toast, she began: "Here we are at episode 600, and it really doesn't feel totally real." It was, she said, "as if we all get to live in this dream of what you thought might be possible someday."

'The alpha dog now'

Mariska took over the top of the call sheet when Meloni left in 2011, and she's stayed there.

"There is something reassuring about seeing Mariska and Chris work together just like old times," Wolf Entertainment's Peter Jankowski told Variety. "The difference is that for the last 15 years it has been Mariska's show. She is the alpha dog now."

"One hundred episodes used to be the measuring stick of success on network TV," he added, "which makes 'SVU''s 600 episodes almost surreal."

As for the Benson and Stabler chemistry fans never stop talking about, Mariska has no explanation. "Some things are a mystery," she said, "and I think chemistry is one."

Will she ever hang up the badge? "I have thought about that," she told E! News in October. "Not yet. Just thought about it for way later. But I'm open."

At $850,000 an episode, nobody at NBC will be in a hurry to see her go. SVU airs Thursdays at 9pm on NBC.