Sarah Snook has madeSuccessions hard-nosed heiress somehow sympathetic.
It must be the side-eye.
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Shiv Roy would so not put up with this.
Did you know that AT&T doesnt work in Greenpoint?
Ive really committed to the artisanal lifestyle, she says.
But when theshow returns in August, the narrative spotlight will be more on Shiv.
Not to mention her mysterious stepmother, Marcia, played by Hiam Abbass, and various outside corporate threats.
We sit in the backyard of a mutedly fussy cafe with monkey-and-bird wallpaper, BOWLS!
on the menu, and a pressed-tin ceiling.
She grew up in Adelaide, which is where, incidentally, the Murdochs got their start owning newspapers.
She had been an actress in London during the 1930s.
So acting was in Snooks blood?
It skipped a generation, she says, but what didnt was a sense of adventure.
Instead, she got a partial scholarship to a school with a solid performing-arts program.
There is a certain charmed, woke-backpacker aspect to Snook.
Just after the 2016 election, she declared, Forgive me, Im jet-lagged.
This is a nightmare, right?
Wake me when the Kardashians are in control of the U.N. (So … my house got broken into.
And then they stayed.
You could imagine her supporting a real-life Gil Eavis, the leftist politician Shiv is trying to co-opt/get elected.
Thinking back, she says, It didnt really seem accessible or feasible to go into the TV-film stuff.
You know, in little old Adelaide … to pretend to be other people for a living.
And yet here she is.
Ill just come and do it and get out of here.
Free trip to L.A. for a weekend and see my friends.
At another point, she tells me, I peaked way too soon.
Jodie Foster was amazing as a man.
Was that a compliment to her or to me?
Snook seems to be having enough fun to get away with a hint of underplayed modesty.
Shiv seems to adore Tom as an inferior, casually toying with him like a cat.
I want to be in on you that shes been having an affair?
And that it likely wont be her last?
Snook makes you empathize with Shiv, even as her character lacks much empathy for anyone else.
I get asked this question a lot: Does she love Tom?
(She herself is single, having recently gotten out of an eight-year relationship.)
Or, like, why is she with Tom?
And I feel like, really down deep, hes the only one wholl always be there unconditionally.
It just sort of happened that way, and then it seemed to be the right choice.
Macfadyen, for his part, loves the abuse.
She gives me this look as if I have three heads, he tells me, laughing.
And Shiv is the uncatchable fish, a master of accruing such power.
That aloofness is part of why her father, Logan, respects her despite her not being a boy.
He has his prejudices, but he also has a brutal regard for people who are effective.
Effectiveness trumps other prejudices.
This next season, Shivs viability is constantly tested, he says.
And she constantly trumps her rivals.
How do I go about this?
I just said to the universe, I want to do theater, she says.
The meeting with the casting director was at a hotel near Covent Garden.
It was Patti Smith.
She goes, You all right?
And then she drifts off into the night.
On Snook: Polo Ralph Lauren Cotton Jumpsuit, $498 at RalphLauren.com.
