Sarah Snook thinks she taped a podcast. In theory, she did. What was unexpected was the zoom application deciding not to record when it needed too. So, while this writer quickly used an iPhone to capture something, we continued. And Snook was kind enough to keep going. The audio? Well, we’re here, aren’t we?
READ MORE: Brian Cox on Logan Roy’s smile at the end of “Succession” season two [Interview]
Snook, who is based in New York City, was not supposed to be in Australia when we had our conversation. And perhaps in another timeline she isn’t. Instead, a quick holiday to visit friends in Melbourne and Sydney saw her getting stuck back “home” when the coronavirus pandemic shut down most of the world in mid-March. And it also found Snook stuck with a suitcase of summer clothes as winter begins in the southern hemisphere.
“We were going back but then everything happened,” Snook recalls. “That’s why I was going on holiday before, at the beginning of the year. It’s like, ‘Just have a quick little scamp around the globe and then come back to start work again.’ But no such luck.”
“Going back” references the third season of “Succession” of course. The Jesse Armstrong created dramedy was expecting to shoot in the late spring to allow for new episodes this fall. The pandemic put that on hold as has the fact that Snook and some of her co-stars, including Jeremy Strong, are still overseas and unable to return to the United States. At least, by the publication date of this story, they were.
Despite a steady career in Australian productions such as “Predestination” and “The Dressmaker,” “Succession” has hand’s down been Snook’s breakout role. As Shiv Roy, she plays the only daughter of Waystar corporation founder Logan Roy (Brian Cox), a woman who attempted to make a career for herself outside of her father’s media empire only to get sucked back into the family’s non-stop scheming to succeed him. The series takes place in a world where one minute you’re in a multi-million dollar Manhattan high rise apartment and in another, you’re on a superyacht in the middle of the Mediterranean.
“It’s so bizarre. I know that there are people in the world who live like that, obviously, because that yacht is available to hire,” Snook says. “We were on it. But, two things. One is you become desensitized to it. And the other thing is you wake up halfway through that desensitizing moment and go, ‘What, I’m on a boat! What is my life?’ Two minutes before you were lounging on the sun deck going, ‘Can I get a coffee?'”
The 32-year-old actress auditioned for the role after a self-tape request from her agent that she didn’t think would get her very far. She recalls, “It was one of those ones you get and you go, ‘Hourly, too big, too far. I’m not a billionaire. I don’t know any billionaires. I don’t know what to do, so I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to get it anyway, I’m not going to do it.’ I was doing another audition at the same, and my friend’s like, ‘Might as well just try it. You got your makeup on, might as well do the other one as well.’ I guess that sort of devil may care attitude worked for Shiv because they flew me out to L.A. to do the screen test.”
That attitude has also helped Snook craft Shiv into a character that’s easy to root for even if she has some of the terribly cruel qualities more consistently demonstrated by her brothers (played by Strong and Kieran Culkin). But Snook truly believes there’s no limit to Shiv’s success. For instance, in the second season, Shiv has the opportunity to be the CEO of the company her father is trying to acquire.
“She has this self-belief, which is unbelievable in some ways,” Snook says. “It is kind of unreasonable or unlikely that she would be offered the CEO-ship of the rival company. But also in Shiv’s mind, it’s like, ‘Well not necessarily, I can chop and change the way I want, because I have enough money.’ Forget the glass ceiling when you’ve got enough money. And maybe that’s true in the real world or not. But I quite like it as a character trait for Shiv.”
Despite Shiv’s confidence and a storyline that continuously teases it, her creator, the aforementioned Armstrong, might not see that sort of leadership role for her down the road. Well, maybe. Unless he just wants Snook to think that (which is entirely possible).
She recalls, “There was something that happened [in the first season]. And I was like, ‘Obviously she wants to be CEO of Waystar.’ And he was like, ‘Really? I don’t think so.’ And it was probably that he truly believed that, or it was a red herring, but, either way, it was brilliant because what it did was I repressed that desire that when it came up in the first episode of the second season, totally blindsided both me and Shiv”
Snook continues, “Obviously she wants that, but she’s been so deceptive to herself that she doesn’t even realize how much she wants that.”
In Snook’s opinion, it’s the brilliance of Armstrong and his writing crew that allows the cast to truly bring the characters to life. But, there are those curveballs. And, as Snook noted, in the first episode of season two, Logan Roy tells his daughter he sees her as the eventual CEO of the family company, Waystar, but he wants her to learn behind-the-scenes and keep their conversation secret. Again, a surprise for both Snook and the audience.
“I got that scene and was like, ‘Oh no. Oh no. I’m coming back for season two and the first thing I have to do on camera is an 11-page scene with Brian Cox, which is beautifully written, and go through so many roller-coaster emotions and so many underlying complexities of character that are so childish, and those things that happened when she was a teenager or a ten-year-old child, to now as a professional woman, to also in the future.’ Just cram it in for your first day on set and up you go! Let’s see how you handle that one.”
It’s also the small details that Armstrong peppers the series with that both Snook and audiences find fascinating. If you enjoyed the recent Hulu limited series “Normal People,” adapted from Sally Rooney‘s novel, you’ll be intrigued to know that Shiv was reading the more celebrated “Conversations with Friends,” by the same author, in episode 10 of the second season.
They asked me, ‘What do you think that Shiv would be reading here?’ And I was like, ‘Ah, it’s too much pressure. And you guys decide,'” Snook says. “And Jesse gave me that. I was like, ‘That’s pretty good.’ I think that Shiv is a person who probably is like, ‘Everyone’s reading this? All right, fine.'”
In theory, perhaps in that alternate reality, Snook has already lined up a project following the third season of “Succession.” Not hard to fathom considering she fit in Seth Rogen’s “An American Pickle” and Kornél Mundruczó’s “Pieces of a Woman” before her trip to Australia. But with the stay-at-home orders or pseudo lockdown orders or whatever stage the world is in at the moment, starring in a worldwide phenomenon means “everything’s changed and nothing’s changed at all.”
“It’s weird to be sort of locked down in isolation because that returns to a sense of normalcy on the broad side of things in the irony of that is it’s completely unusual,” Snook says. “But I don’t know, I guess I just see my friends and hang out and it’s like, everything’s regular! But then I get some more interesting offers or people that I hugely respect [are a] fan of the show or, or have watched the show and that kind of is bizarre. And even just hearing that ‘worldwide phenomenon’ or something like that is so… I don’t actually know how to compute that. Maybe in 10 years time I can look back and be like, ‘Oh, that’s what that is.’ But when you’re in it, it’s hard to compute, I think, you know?”
“Succession” is available on HBO and HBO Max.