Anyone paying a fraction of attention to the drama plaguing Succession's scheming Roy family knows that lone daughter Shiv (Sarah Snook) is by far the most qualified of her father's four heirs. Grounded, capable, and poised, Shiv is the inverse of her dopey, deeply incompetent brothers—the only logical choice as successor if her father, Logan (Brian Cox), intends to keep his company afloat.
But in Season 1, amid the myriad takeover attempts and self-inflicted public relations meltdowns that Waystar Royco suffered at the hands of the Roy sons, Logan made only one passing, half-jeering reference to Shiv's obvious suitability. Maybe it was because she denied any interest in Logan's empire beyond pulling a few strings for her clients in her work as a political consultant. Or maybe it was because her choice in partner—another inept, power-hungry fool in the vein of her brothers—raised a few eyebrows within the family. Regardless, the new season premiere reveals that she's been toying with the idea of taking over for a long time. When Logan finally offers Shiv the CEO role following Kendall's catastrophic career belly flop, she plays hard to get—just like Daddy taught her—before ultimately accepting.
After spending a season playing Shiv as a semi-outsider, Sarah Snook embraced the challenge of this new direction—but admits it intimidated the hell out of her. "If I bomb," she says, "[the writers] might say, 'We're going to change the story because you suck, Sarah.'" She lets out a hearty laugh. Unlike the icy, calculating Shiv, Snook is genial and warm, with a zippy Australian accent. She grins when asked if her character knows she's Logan's number one. "Yes," she whispers conspiratorially, before adding an addendum, "I think the company is his favorite child in the end."
Shiv inherited her father's proficiency in mind games, and the Season 2 premiere positions them for a bullfight. "Shiv knows she can get away with a little more, or push back against him a little more, because she's set up her own rules: I'm not even playing in your game. I'm playing in my own game," says Snook. This new dynamic—and its consequences for the other characters—sets up Succession for another cataclysmic Roy showdown. Below, Snook talks to BAZAAR.com about shooting that pivotal scene with Logan, trying to stay composed in the face of Nicholas Braun's on-set antics, and her own theories about Shiv's past.
Shiv is playing a whole new game this season. Did going into Season 2 feel different from Season 1?
It did, certainly because Shiv is suddenly on such a different trajectory. What was pitched at the beginning of the series was that she wasn't interested in the company, and then what was revealed this season was, Oop, she wanted it all along! I loved that. It's been really fun to deal with this new storyline. But when we got to Episode 5 [of this season], I was like, "Shiv's doing a lot," and I felt like I didn't have my head in the game! My time might run out soon, and next season maybe it's Roman's turn! [Laughs.]
The scene with Logan and Shiv going head-to-head over the future of the company is like a verbal tennis match between you and Brian Cox. What was it like to shoot that scene?
That scene terrified me, because it was first up on the first day of shooting. I was freaking out. I really wanted to do a good job. I had heard that Shiv would be angled into this new trajectory, so I wanted to nail it. If I bomb, they might say, "We're going to change the story because you suck, Sarah." [Laughs.] These are the thoughts going through your head! But Brian is such a consummate theater actor that you can go a little bit this way and he'll catch the ball and throw it back over there. It is tennis. I had so much fun doing that with him.
Did you read the Murdoch piece in The New York Times?
I did.
The reports about executives eye-rolling in meetings were reminiscent of Shiv's signature side-eye.
It is weird to read those kinds of articles. I'm not basing my character on a particular person in real life, because I feel like that's limiting—you want to be able to expand and change and develop your own choices. But it is interesting when you read articles about real-life people and think, Ooh, that's familiar!
Can what's going on behind the closed doors of the rich possibly be as entertaining as what Jesse Armstrong [the show's creator] imagines is going on?
Well, even if it is as entertaining, we'll never know. They've got some really good media relations. And maybe that's a good thing—because if we did know what happens behind those closed doors, it might be a bit too confronting … [laughs]. But Jesse and his writing team are wonderful. That's why I think the table reads are my favorite days during shooting. You get to watch all the other actors work on their scenes, which you'd otherwise never get to see. I'm not in the scene where Greg and Tom are in a panic room throwing water bottles, but I get to watch them reading it, and I'm in stitches because of how funny it's going to be.
Was there one particular moment during a table read where everyone lost it and had to stop?
It's actually in Episode 10 of this season. It involves chicken. That's all I'll give you. You'll know it when it happens. I hope it will be as funny on the show as it was at the table read.
Does Shiv know she's Logan's favorite?
I think so.
She's the logical choice to succeed him, and she knows it. But there's still that underlying tension of exactly how Logan envisions the "choreography," as he puts it, of Shiv taking over. Kendall never had to jump through those kinds of hoops.
I think the company is his favorite child in the end. But Shiv knows she can get away with a little more, or push back against him a little more, because she's set up her own rules: I'm not even playing in your game. I'm playing in my own game. But what was interesting to discover this season was the ways in which Shiv and Logan are quite similar. They have the same kind of ruthlessness, the same kind of fallibilities and flaws, and maybe the same Achilles heel. I was looking to Brian to see what he does with his character and how I could emulate it or be challenged by those similarities.
There's a lot of corporate intrigue and chess playing and plotting between the characters. Do you have any idea what's coming before you get the script?
No. Humans in the real world don't know what's going to happen, so the characters shouldn't know what's going to happen, necessarily. I like the present-moment vibe of living as a TV character. You don't get to chart a journey or plan an arc in the way you would for theater or film. Something about that is kind of liberating, because you give control to people who are far more intelligent and talented than you are when it comes to creating a story.
Shiv has a great poker face. As we see at the end of the episode, she can keep a secret from Tom pretty easily too.
Yeah, she's pretty clandestine, which adds a certain complexity to their relationship. She keeps her cards close to her chest, but when the rug gets pulled out from underneath her and she doesn't know what her next move is, she relies on Tom as a sounding board. In Season 2, we see what makes Tom and Shiv work together. People were asking in Season 1, "What the fuck are they together for?" Now we get a glimpse into that.
The show doesn't use flashbacks. It throws bits of backstory into the fast-paced dialogue and expects the audience to keep up and put things together. But do the writers ever map out a more comprehensive backstory with the actors?
Yes and no. There's been talk about backstory but with the idea that we reserve the right to change our mind, which I really love. Until it's put into print, or even until it's put into the final edit, it's not real. There have been things that were in the script that didn't ultimately make the cut, which then get changed in a later script. You're like, "Wait, that doesn't track with Episode 2." And they're like, "We cut it from the edit! So it's changed." You're like, "My life's history has changed?!" [Laughs.]
Is that hard to keep track of?
It's sort of joyful. You just let go. It's amazing how Jesse Armstrong keeps all these details straight in his head. He's stitching everything together. He's got an exceptional mind. The density of our dialogue—we're doing 10-page scenes with seven characters who've all got backstories and histories with each other, and objectives that are leading towards the next scene, and we're doing it in one take. It's like a theater show.
At one point in Episode 8, Brian refers to someone called "Diego." It was a random name, and afterwards, Brian asked, "Who's that?" And Jesse just said, "Eh, probably someone Logan knows." I love that Jesse respects the audience enough to expect that you'll just keep up. You have to accept that sometimes people will talk about someone you don't know, that there are people outside of the universe you've seen so far. Usually people feel that you have to explain everything to an audience. I think it's so much more respectful not to.
So how do you know enough to get into Shiv's head?
I guess you just have to trust. You have to leap off the cliff and hope you've got wings, even if they're made of re-drafts and blue pages, triple-pink, triple-revised white pages. It's changing all the time. But the mainstays are there. The mainstays are the relationships between the family members. Those are the things you can lean on. I know how I feel about Roman and I know how I feel about Kendall, and if a piece of history is invented, then that is usually solidifying the already-existing history we have.
My favorite scenes are the ones where we get all the Roy siblings—Connor, Shiv, Kendall, Roman—together in one place. In Season 1, we had that only once where it was just the four of us, and then Connor was cut from the edit. In the boat house scene at the wedding, where they're smoking the joint [in Episode 9], Connor comes in at the end, but he was cut for time. It was such a beautiful scene to shoot with just the four of us. I really got to understand who they are with each other. We get that in a couple of scenes this season, where it's the four of them together. There's a scene in [Season 2] Episode 10 where certain histories are brought up, and I thought, That makes sense; I believe that that happened between us.
There's a bread crumb from the premiere when Shiv and Roman recall an incident from their childhood when Logan beat Roman for ordering lobster because, "It's not polite to order the most expensive thing when you're not paying."
Those are such telling little snippets. You put them all together, and they create these complex, troubled people.
There are consultants on the show who advise you on how the ultra-wealthy live, behave, and dress. What's something you learned from them?
That there are jobs for a lot of things. There are people who are employed to look after wealthy people's houses when they're not around. You have your housekeeper, yeah, but you also have an entire staff to just keep up the house regularly. And if we're planning to go to the Hamptons house, we have to give them at least three days warning so that they can prepare the house, stock up all the food, call the chef to come in. It reminds me of something from medieval England—the king's going to Scotland, so his retinue has to go ahead of time to buy up all the pigs in the village, slaughter them, cook them, and prepare for the king to arrive. You get a sense of that preparation this season. Someone's either cleaning up around them or after them or before them to protect their little bubble from real life. They can just drift on through.
And yet the decisions they make from inside their bubble affect the many unseen workers who maintain it for them.
It's so callous, the sort of decision making that happens at that level. There's a humanity missing from top executive levels. We get to see a little bit of what those ripple effects are, though maybe not enough. Maybe we'll see more. But there's a scene in Season 1—it's blink-and-you'll-miss-it—where Greg is watching an induction video as he goes into Waystar on his first day. It's a soft, small moment. The video is talking about how important diversity is to the company, but in the background of the scene, every single person filing into the office is an old white man. If you're watching keenly enough, you see the commentary in those moments. It's not just a scene of Greg being a buffoon while watching a video.
You've mentioned in the past that you think Shiv is working through some sort of trauma—will that be explored this season?
I'm still playing with it in my head. It gets hinted at, this allusion to Shiv having had a meltdown. She's a person who is quite capable of staying centered no matter the squall around her, but when things are out of her control, she gets a little more highly strung, more discombobulated, and that's when she turns to Tom for stability. But we don't explore what the actual catalyst [for that trauma] was yet. I think I know. I made a decision for now that makes sense in my mind. I think that whatever the incident was in her past, it coincided with meeting Tom and the rise of that relationship.
Is there someone on the show you wish you got to play more scenes against?
I would love to do more with Nick. I've been angling for a Shiv–Greg alliance. I don't think it's going to happen, but if it did, I probably wouldn't be able to keep a straight face.
In a recent Hollywood Reporter piece about the show, Jeremy Strong said, "Brian Cox once yelled at me in a scene. It was so mean, I cried." Has that happened to you?
[Laughs.] No, Brian, never made me cry. I mean, he probably could if he wanted to. He can eviscerate you with a stare, but he's also a great, big, soft teddy bear.
Succession airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on HBO, HBO Go, and HBO Now.
The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
