"Ah, shivers!" exclaimed Sarah Snook as she collected her Critics Choice Award for her performance in the miniseries All Her Fault, swerving an expletive in a flustered acceptance speech. The Australian actress, 38, who wore a dinner jacket for the ceremony, was recognised for her portrayal of an anguished parent in the psychological thriller, which depicts every parent's worst nightmare: a mother goes to pick up her child from an after-school play date only to discover that the youngster has vanished.
Sarah, who rose to fame as the icy Shiv Roy in the hit HBO series Succession, knew exactly how to tap into the fear felt by her character, Marissa Irvine. "In terms of prep work, I had a baby myself – not on purpose for this role, but it helped," the actress laughs, referring to her two-year-old daughter with her husband, the comedian Dave Lawson.
"It was useful to use my daughter in asking those questions: what would it be like to have this situation happen to me? Being a mother, I understood the mindset, the challenges, the expectations; the deep well of love and fear, and the anxiety that comes with it."
Based on Andrea Mara’s book of the same name, All Her Fault unfolds as Sarah's character arrives to collect her young son, Milo, from a play date, only to be met by a stranger who tells her that Milo has never been there.
Marissa's world implodes, and as her panic escalates, an unexpected twist makes the situation worse. Desperate to find her child, she is forced to confront everything she thought she knew about her friends, her family and even herself.
The disturbing thriller, co-starring Dakota Fanning and Michael Peña, is set in the elite world of the Chicago suburbs, filled with rich parents, luxury homes, nannies and shocking secrets. "I'd never done a proper thriller like this before, and it had a great twist that I was excited about," Sarah says. "You engage with all the drama, but you’re also playing a woman who is very successful and also wants to be a mum."
"We explore the mental load that women often take on in a parenting role"
She says her character is different from the common portrayal of women with high-flying careers who pay less attention to their children. "In this, she wants to be present for both. How do you balance that?" Sarah asks.
"It cannot be just her fault; that’s not possible. We explore the mental load that women often take on in a parenting role."
Sarah and her husband, who is also Australian, share parenting duties while raising their daughter in Brooklyn, New York, also making frequent trips to their homeland.
Asked if All Her Fault might serve as a wake-up call to fathers who don’t do as much heavy lifting as their female partners, she says: "I find it hard to speak to that for myself, because my husband is a very present father and he’s taken time off work to be able to help to raise our daughter.
"But naturally, with child-rearing, the woman is the one who’s bearing the child and carrying the child. Then, postpartum, you need to be around fairly consistently for at least six months afterwards, minimum.
"Not all women can have that time for postpartum. They have to go back to work, so then there’s a massive imbalance, and it usually ends up falling to the women to take more of the hit. And then that’s the guilt and the blame. So men stepping up to balance all of that is important."
"Being a mother, I understood the mindset, the challenges, the expectations; the deep well of love and fear, and the anxiety that comes with it."
Sarah says it was a relief to return home to her daughter after a day spent crying as Marissa. "When we were doing hard days, the best thing to do was to go home and give my daughter a cuddle, because all the oxytocin and all that yumminess comes back," she says.
The actress started out on stage and has since won an Olivier Award and a Tony Award for portraying all 26 roles in The Picture of Dorian Gray in productions in the West End and on Broadway. In a career that has taken her around the world, she has appeared in Australian, American and British TV shows, including an episode of Black Mirror, along with numerous film roles, recently voicing the main protagonist in the adult animated tragicomedy Memoir of a Snail.
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