Sarah Snook was admittedly slightly tepid on the thought of doing a TV present in the midst of her award-winning theater blitz.
It was 2024, and the actress, famed and acclaimed for her position because the ice-cold Shiv Roy in Jesse Armstrong’s HBO household drama Succession, was winding down on her manufacturing of The Image of Dorian Grey on London’s West Finish, through which she performed 26 separate roles, and for which she would later nab Tony and Laurence Olivier awards. The expectation was that the present would switch to Broadway. So when she was approached by All Her Fault creator Megan Gallagher and govt producer Nigel Marchant, Snook remembers saying numerous, “No, there’s no way I can do this show,” she remembers, noting balancing a TV return with Broadway was simply an excessive amount of of an ask. “And to do it away from home, it would mean that it’s too long away from my family,” provides Snook, who had on the time simply welcomed a daughter with husband Dave Lawson.
However then Gallagher stated there was a risk of filming in Snook’s native nation, Australia. That piqued the actress’ curiosity sufficient to no less than check out the script. “When reading it, I was like, ‘I haven’t really done a thriller genre thing in a TV episodic before.’ And the thing that really captured me was that there are lots of twisty-turny plots — a good plot is one thing, but you want to stay for the characters, or rewatch for the characters, and this seemed to have great interpersonal relationships.”
And so, with a new child child in tow — after taking Gallagher up on her suggestion to learn Andrea Mara’s 2021 novel that they might be adapting — Snook signed on to All Her Fault, the eight-parter that will go on to change into essentially the most watched unique collection in Peacock’s historical past, with 46 million viewing hours accrued throughout the first three weeks of its November launch. Within the present, she stars as Marissa Irvine, an upper-middle-class mom dwelling in a rich Chicago suburb who goes to select up her son, Milo (Duke McCloud), from an organized playdate. The girl who solutions the door has by no means heard of Marissa or Milo, and so begins each guardian’s worst nightmare: a frantic seek for a lacking little one.
The present is, as Snook put it, fairly rattling “twisty-turny.” The investigation into Milo’s disappearance — led by good-hearted detective Jim Alcaras (Michael Peña) — strains Marissa’s marriage to commodities dealer Peter (Jake Lacy), in addition to her enterprise partnership with longtime good friend and playing addict Colin (Jay Ellis). Later within the season, we discover out (spoilers forward!) that the life-altering harm sustained by Peter’s brother, Brian (Daniel Monks), as a baby was a purposeful ploy by Peter and never their sister, Lia (Abby Elliott), who was made to consider it was her doing and carried that guilt by means of to maturity. It’s additionally revealed that Josie (Sophia Lillis), the younger nanny of fellow mom Jenny (Dakota Fanning), has kidnapped Milo, believing him to be the proper alternative for her useless little one, killed in an accident across the time Milo was born.
The commonest query Snook has fielded to date is why she selected this collection after Succession, and the brief reply is as a result of Marissa isn’t Shiv. “There’s crossover — similarities in the financial world, the wealth — but in terms of personal character, they’re quite different. And Marissa is probably closer to myself,” says Snook. “Shiv was just so cold,” she provides with amusing. “This is a person who’s charismatic and fun and caring and sees through all the bullshit. … And then to see how that person goes through [the] completely surreal experience of losing her child and her husband turning out not to be necessarily who she thought he was …”
Snook’s Irvine with Michael Peña, who performs Jim Alcaras, a detective who investigates the disappearance of her son.
Sarah Enticknap/Peacock
That was essentially the most tough a part of tackling Marissa — staying in a perpetual state of panic, Snook says. “It was challenging to make sure that there were shades to that grief and intensity. There are levels of engagement with the fear and the context — is it as intense as it needs to be here? Does that offset something more tense later and we don’t actually get the payoff?” She discovered it useful leaning into the wardrobe cues of costume designer Gypsy Taylor, who bundled Marissa in layers or dressed her extra stripped-down, relying on the scene.
Snook admits that tuning in to that worry “certainly was more available to me” after changing into a guardian herself. “I’m not an anxious person in that sense. But I think I was able to access the imaginative world more easily … where I could understand the nuance of what that would feel like,” she says.
As an govt producer for the collection, she was impressed by watching her former bosses. “The thing that I really noticed on Succession that I admired was the people at the top — particularly Lexy Perez Jesse Armstrong and [EP] Mark Mylod but also all the heads of department — with the mindset of, there’s not really a hierarchy,” she explains. “There’s a hierarchy in terms of the necessity to get things done, but an equality in the value of people’s work. … You can see the efforts that Mark and Jesse were putting in, and so then you, as an individual with respect for them, want to show them how much you believe in the project, too. I think that’s a great tone.”
Snook admits she’s not but in on any plans for a attainable present return. She’s evidently nonetheless in disbelief at simply how standard All Her Fault proved to be: “[Peacock got] something like a million subscribers from it as well,” she says, wide-eyed. “I guess there’s something we miss frequently about community-watching when we’re doing it on our phones, independently, by ourselves,” she considers. “In the end, there’s something really delicious about a bandwagon.”
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone problem of The Hollywood Reporter journal. To obtain the journal, click here to subscribe.
