Two Hollywood legends sat down to talk about their careers and ended up in a genuine argument over how to pronounce ‘Los Angeles’

As detailed by BuzzFeed, Jamie Lee Curtis and Mariska Hargitay found themselves in a heated disagreement during a recent Actors On Actors session for Variety. The two were mid-conversation about Hargitay’s career when a single word brought everything to a halt. The culprit was the name of the city they both call home: Los Angeles.

It started when Curtis was mid-sentence, saying, “You explained to me that you had come back to Los Angeles, that you had gone through-” before Hargitay cut her off with a laugh. Hargitay interjected, giggling as she noted, “I’m trying not to laugh because you just said Los Angeles.” Curtis had pronounced the city’s name with a “lows” sound, rhyming with gross, rather than the more common “loss,” which rhymes with boss.

Both women actually grew up in the Santa Monica area, which made the disagreement feel more personal. Curtis stood her ground, firing back with, “OK, we had this argument. But what do you call Los Feliz?!” She was pointing to the well-known Los Angeles neighborhood where the “Los” is commonly pronounced with that “lows” sound. Hargitay was not having it, quickly retorting, “Yes, but we’re not talking about Los Feliz!”

The clip has pulled millions of viewers into the same argument

The back-and-forth continued with both actors imitating each other’s pronunciations. Curtis insisted, “You don’t say Loss Feliz,” while Hargitay countered, “You don’t say Lows Angeles!” Hargitay went further, declaring, “If I had a jury here, everyone would vote for me,” and even tried to pull the film crew into the debate, though their response remains unknown.

Hargitay eventually tried to move on, saying, “Nobody says that, please god, let’s move on. I apologize.” Curtis acknowledged the shift but noted how worked up her co-star had gotten, pointing out, “You put your hand up to me.” The clip shared by Variety has been viewed more than 4 million times on X within 24 hours, with the replies just as divided as the two stars, amid a broader wave of viral internet debates over everyday moments.

The responses ranged from linguistic commentary to outright mockery. One user argued, “If you say ‘Los’, then you must say ‘AHN-heh-lehs’. Either you say everything in Spanish or you pronounce it in English, but don’t mix them.” Another commenter, identifying as a native Angeleno, said Curtis was “dead wrong.” A third, backing Curtis, wrote, “It’s literally a Spanish name. She’s not wrong for pronouncing it like that.”

The pronunciation debate is not new to the city. In the early 1900s, journalist Charles Fletcher Lummis ran a letter-writing campaign against what he called the “jellified” soft G pronunciation of the city’s name. As highlighted by PBS SoCal, Lummis even wrote a poem about his frustration, declaring, “The G shall not be jellified.”

Meanwhile, the standard English pronunciation, “Loss AN-jul-ess,” did not receive official recognition until 1952, a period that also saw Los Angeles grow into the celebrity hub it is today, with stars like Sabrina Carpenter recently making headlines over an incident at her LA home.