Sarah Snook cried watching the ‘Succession’ finale: ‘I was sad for Shiv’
Three-time Emmy Award nominee and 2023 Best Drama Actress front-runner Sarah Snook is finally opening up about the final episode of “Succession.”
Speaking to Variety in an interview published Wednesday but conducted before the Screen Actors Guild went on strike, Snook revealed she watched the final episode at her home in Australia alongside her mother, stepfather, sister, and her husband, Dave Lawson, and the couple’s newborn child. Snook said she cried throughout the final episode, “With Open Eyes,” “because I was sad for Shiv.”
In the finale, Shiv is once again passed over for the Waystar Royco CEO position due to her failed alliance with GoJo boss Lukas Matsson (Emmy nominee Alexander Skarsgard). As a result, Shiv forms an uneasy troika with her brothers Kendall (Emmy nominee and past winner Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Emmy nominee Kieran Culkin). But in the final moments, Shiv decides she can’t “stomach” Kendall as the family’s business leader and votes against him in the board room. Shiv’s decision makes her estranged husband, Tom Wambsgans (Emmy nominee and past winner Matthew Macfadyen), the new CEO and leaves Shiv once again on the outside.
“She just tried so fucking hard, and ended up where she is — in this kind of gilded cage, next to the thing that she wants,” Snook told Variety. “And the journey’s not over for her. It’s not over for any of them, but still, she’s in the orbit of the CEO, and that will be really painful for her.”
“Succession” ends for Shiv and Tom with the pair riding silently in a limo, barely holding hands. The show’s creator, Emmy nominee and past winner Jesse Armstrong, described the moment as “two bombs being transported” and suggested it meant Shiv and Tom were finally somewhat equals in their toxic relationship.
“I would say equal — with Shiv below, if anything, to be honest,” Snook said of her reading of the scene. “[Tom] would go into work the next day, and she would have to be dancing on the outer rim. Friends of mine have been like, ‘So what do you think would happen to Shiv after this?’ Shiv is about to have a baby, all of this has gone down, she’s sort of thrown back into a world with her husband that wasn’t a great situation beforehand. But I think the baby thing is really about to hit in a way that is inescapable. And she’s probably someone who would go into quite a deep postpartum depression, and quite a difficult next 12 months, I think.”
“Succession” ended with an almost shocking fracture of the Roy family – with Kendall left adrift after being usurped one final time by Shiv (and to an extent, Roman). But fans who hoped the siblings would somehow reconnect in the future have an ally in Snook. “I feel like Shiv and Roman would reconcile in a way where he would be the shitty but great weird uncle for her kid, and there might be some sort of strange little family unit that gets splintered off,” she said to Variety. Maybe if Armstrong ever returns to the show for a spinoff, he can start there.
“Succession” received 27 Emmy nominations for its final season. It’s expected to win multiple awards, including Best Drama Series.
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