If anyone deserves to win an Emmy this year from the cast of “Succession” it’s Sarah Snook. Previously nominated in 2020, Snook masterfully captured the consequences of a corporate takeover attempt gone wrong in the show’s season finale. The season ends on her face, as Shiv, her character, realizes she’s been betrayed by the one person she would have never suspected.
READ MORE: “Succession”: Matthew Macfadyen on Tom’s “Betrayal by a thousand cuts” [Interview]
It turns out that moment was completely improvised. Snook reveals that the scene ended in the script when Shiv’s husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) walked into the room. Director Mark Mylod and series creator Jesse Armstrong gave their actors freedom to explore a scene and that found Snook walking away from her family to try and compose herself. Tom comes over and puts his hands on her shoulders while she looks in the general direction of the camera in utter shock.
“There’s never been a moment where you don’t feel the freedom to move and react appropriately to your character and feel the trust that the camera person will capture it,” Snook says. “And so that moment happened here with Matthew and myself, and then it very much felt natural to just want to break out, want to get away. And also I could see where the camera was. I was like, ‘Well, let me just sit here and see if I’m either off-camera and they’ve seen me walk off, or here and then maybe they can catch it. I don’t know.’ But yeah, again, in that situation, that was after cut. Mark was like, ‘I think we may have found the ending, but I’m not sure yet. We’ll keep shooting.’ Like, O.K., great. So, as an actor, you feel pretty special where you’ve like, ‘Oh great. My choices. I feel confirmed in my choices.’ You know? And then it’s like chasing the dragon. You’re trying to do it again. And yeah. It’s never going to happen the same way twice.”
Over the course of our conversation, Snook also provides insight into the episode’s other standout moment, when Kendall (Jeremy Strong) confesses to a crime that occurred in the first season of the show to his siblings, and much, much more.
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The Playlist: Congratulations on the latest season of Succession and all the accolades that have come with it. The show has had some stellar moments, but was there a moment when you realized that the finale of season three was going to be a pivotal moment in television history?
Sarah Snook: No, I don’t think to that extent at all that you’ve just said. That’s very kind of you. And it’s a bit overwhelming still. I think in one sense, even arriving at the venue that we shot the very final scene at, is this grand palatial villa. And seeing the arena, I guess, that made it feel really like, “Oh, we’ve got to step up here.” We’ve got a bigger theater to play to in a way. The setting here is dramatic. And so what is going to happen is also going to live up to it, I think. And also we did the scene over two days and that feeling of shooting it kind of as a play. Sometimes you get the feeling that “Oh, we’re really overshooting this. We don’t need to be doing this.” But it never feels like with Mark that anything’s overshot. It just feels like you’re exploring and you’re going deeper. And there’s a wider scope to maybe fail with the safety of knowing they’ve just got so much footage, they can cut around this. But it meant, it felt like we were doing a play, like we rehearsed it on a Friday night and then we performed it on a Monday.
There are two pivotal moments in the final episode. One is clearly when the siblings, played by Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin and yourself, all sort of reconcile and show their genuine affection for each other. And that amazing one-shot that looks like a Renaissance painting that has been shown everywhere. Was that also a scene where you guys rehearsed it off-camera for a while before you shot it? Or was it something that you guys just explored on set that day?
You mean the one in the dusty sort of back gallery kind of world?
Yes.
Now, we didn’t rehearse it prior to the day. That felt more like rehearsal on camera in a way. And part of that is just sort of different processes. But it was actually, to be honest, quite a difficult day. That was a day that the physical elements and the natural elements seemed to be against us in that it was a 45-degree incline. And I was in high heels and the road was rocky and dusty. And it was like a, I don’t know, it felt like 110-degree day, with the sun beating down. But then, because the dust was white, it was beating up as well.
Kieran, very smartly put sunglasses on. And I was like, “Well, we can’t both have sunglasses. So, I guess I’m like this.” I had dust in my eye. I lost vision in my right eye. It was a lot. At one point, I’m consoling Jeremy, and my eye had blown up so much that I had to keep dipping my hat like this so that I could just casually be like this. And so you couldn’t see that I had this eye closed, but yeah, [we] had a lot of physical elements against us.
Were you worried about that scene because of all those elements?
Yeah, totally. Mark is great. He always will say, “We’ve got it.” And you trust him when he says it. There was a particular take where Jeremy really broke down and was very raw and open. And I think that’s the one that they’ve used. It must be because it was amazing. And both Jesse and Mark came out of their little shed where the split was and Mark said, “We’ve got it. Definitely. We’ll go again, but we’ve got it.”
So many siblings can hold grudges against each other. And I think many viewers until the end of the season thought that a line had been crossed and there was no way Shiv and Roman would ever forgive Kendall after his attempt to take over the company on his own. Why do you think they forgave him? Or was it just about business?
Yeah. I think in that way, that the time constraint of needing to make a decision quickly, I think in the stakes, the height of the stakes, means that they can sweep and forget. But I think that’s what makes me really excited for the fourth season because you know families. You don’t go, “Oh, I forgive a grudge or I forgive a wrongdoing. And now we’re all happy families.” It takes time and effort to overcome difficulty if you’re going to reunite and be together and really see each other. And yeah, you might have been able to do it once when the stakes are really high, but the stakes inevitably will diminish over time. And then you’re left looking at each other and wondering, do we want to be friends?
Do I trust this person?
Totally. Yeah.
The season ends on Shiv’s face. It’s a shot of your character realizing everything that has happened to her. And likely assuming that Tom has betrayed her. Did you know that this was coming? And how did you process it for her?
It wasn’t until I got the script that I knew that’s where it was going to be taken. And it was great because Jesse had told me at the beginning of the season, “Do you want to know what happens?” Like, “Yeah.” So he sort of gave this really rough outline. He failed to mention that. But weirdly, in the performance of doing it during the whole season, you sort of forget the plot points. And so you forget the broad outline and it doesn’t really make sense until you’re living it. I don’t think that Shiv comes together in the way that her behavior has caused this in a lot of ways. But for the actor, for me, that’s really fun to be able to then play into, because you kind of just take it moment by moment, like watching a car crash. You’re trying to like watch a scene, try to work out what the thing is, that’s happening, and in the moment that it’s happening.
And those moments for me are really fun, especially if you’re given the space and time to do it with Mark, being a wonderful director, and we were really supported by the crew. And it’s the kind of thing of taking it right down and wondering, “Is this good for me? Or is this bad for me?” And the more interesting point with that for Shiv, I think she doesn’t know at that point, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for her. Just the feeling of being betrayed, which I think for Shiv is not something that she’s familiar with Tom. I think she’s familiar with betrayal, with her dad and her brothers. And I think from the person she least expected? That’s where it’s shocking. And it was shocking because she thought in many ways she was in control of the relationship. She was the one who was always like, “Why don’t we have an open thing? Why don’t we do this?” And always thinking that she could just manage him. Do you think the big shock was for her that he would go around her and that she can’t trust him now? Well, yes and no. People have always said, “Why does Shiv like Tom at all? Why are they together?” And I think she knows that he’s an asshole to Greg. I think she knows that she is with somebody who in turn can be hard and cold and unkind. And to be honest, I think that’s probably something that she finds attractive, that there’s both sides to him, but she gets the nice soft sort of controllable side, I guess. And I think it is quite shocking when that target is turned around onto her. Yeah, absolutely, something she didn’t expect.
I was talking to Matthew recently about that final scene. And he said, what he thought was so remarkable about it is that because it was in such a constrained space, it could have been something that was seemed too stagey, that seemed unnatural.
Totally. Yeah.
You have that particular moment when Shiv is just trying to get away from Tom. Do you remember what the direction Mark gave you? Or did he just let you naturally go there and the camera just follow you?
The scene ended when Matthew came in. That’s on the page where the scene ended. And so anything beyond that was all improvised. And the way in which we shoot, yes, it could seem stagey because, I guess again, the arena. But it’s something about the way we shoot with three cameras. And there was one up on sticks on the left-hand side, and then there was a dolly and a steady. And also because we shoot with transition lenses, like your zoom lenses. So you can go from 40 to 100. There’s never been a moment where you don’t feel the freedom to move and react appropriately to your character and feel the trust that the camera person will capture it. And so that moment happened here with Matthew and myself, and then it very much felt natural to just want to break out, want to get away. And also I could see where the camera was. I was like, “Well, let me just sit here and see if I’m either off-camera and they’ve seen me walk off, or here and then maybe they can catch it. I don’t know.” But yeah, again, in that situation, that was after cut. Mark was like, “I think we may have found the ending, but I’m not sure yet. We’ll keep shooting.” Like, O.K., great. So, as an actor, you feel pretty special where you’ve like, “Oh great. My choices. I feel confirmed in my choices.” You know? And then it’s like chasing the dragon. You’re trying to do it again. And yeah. It’s never going to happen the same way twice.
Have you ever worked on anything where you felt this much freedom as an actor?
Never. No. And it’s really, I’ve learned so much. It’s challenged me an enormous amount, but I’ve learned so much as an actor, being able to trust your instincts and get in touch with your instincts more. And at the same time, fold in the respect for craft and technique that everybody else is doing the same thing. That for everybody to trust their instincts at the same time means that we all have to respect each other’s different ways of working or different needs of working. The camera person needs to be able to do certain things for your instincts to be captured. So their instincts are like, “I think she’s going to go this way,” and when you’re working that finely tuned together it does become like a dance.
Do you find yourself rooting for Shiv, hoping that she wins at the end? Or is it just, “Whatever happens with the character, I’m just excited to play her,” sort of thing?
Both. You mean the end of the series or the end of the season?
Well, eventually someone has to succeed Logan, right? He can’t live forever. Maybe he can, but in theory he can’t live forever. Maybe he’ll live to 120. Who knows? He can keep running the company, but at some point, there will be a successor…
You’d expect. One would expect. [Laughs.]
You’d expect. But do you find yourself rooting for her in that way? Or are you like, “I don’t know if she’d actually be good at the job”?
Oh, both, even-handedly I’d say yes, she, 100% should be the top job. And part of that is because like, that’ll be really fun to play. And the other side of that, I guess is that she 100% shouldn’t be, but she should try because that’s also fun to play. Because what’s more fun to play than somebody who thinks they’re going to win and then ends up failing? Shiv has been the person who’s given a veneer of control her entire life. And seeing that person out of control would be fascinating and really fun to play. So, yeah. I both root for her and also don’t because in the reality of the show, she probably shouldn’t be CEO. She’s not really got a lot of experience, but she seems like she does.
I don’t know if Jessie has told you what the plans are for this season.
Not at all.
But in theory, if it opens up close to when the last episode happened, she may be out of control because she doesn’t know who to trust. Is that why you’re so excited to come back for?
Oh, I mean, I’m so excited, because I’m a fan of the show as well. What is going to happen? How does she get out of this? Just the pickle that she’s in is delicious. I have no idea what will happen in the next season, but I can presume it’ll be something about the fallout from this, which would be about, how do these siblings work together and forgive individually? What level of control is she able to exert on herself? And what level of control is she able to exert on her brothers? And yeah, maybe that is failing. Who knows?
“Succession” is available on HBO Max.