Sarah Snook opens up about portraying a woman whose child mysteriously vanishes in twist-filled thriller All Her Fault
When working mom Marissa Irvine arrives to pick up her young son Milo from his first playdate in an upscale Chicago neighbourhood, the woman who answers the door is a stranger. She doesn’t have Milo, and hasn’t seen him. As every parent’s worst nightmare begins to unfold, new questions lead to deep secrets, revealing cracks in the Irvines’ seemingly perfect world until everything is left shattered.
That’s the premise of All Her Fault, a new thriller starring Succession Emmy winner Sarah Snook as Marissa, with Dakota Fanning as Jenny Kaminski, the acquaintance whom Marissa believed was hosting her son’s playdate, and who becomes intimately entangled in the search and scandal that follow. Rounding out the cast are: Jake Lacy as Marissa’s husband, Peter; Sophia Lillis as Carrie, a nanny suspected of abducting Milo; Michael Peña as a cop investigating the disappearance; and Abby Elliott as Lia, Peter’s loose-cannon sister.
For Snook, All Her Fault took her into uncharted waters. “I’ve never done really a proper thriller like this before, and it had a really great twist that I was excited to be into,” she says. “You engage with all the drama and all these scenes — and then just playing a mom who is very successful and also wants to be a mom. Often we see on screen women who are successful and then, you know, child-rearing is kind of a pain in the a**. But in this, she wants to be present for both. And how do you balance that?”
Not only does Snook lead the cast, she’s a producer. While that increased her workload, it also gave her a voice in shaping the direction of the series. “We had a lot of robust conversations, which was great to be able to be involved in that creative side,” she explains. “And it’s not something I had done beforehand.”
Meanwhile, Snook herself is mother to a two-year-old, and she admits that juggling acting, producing and parenting wasn’t easy. “It was a tricky balance,” she says. “But it was great. It was great to be able to talk with [series creator] Megan [Gallagher] and all the writers and the producers, and really work out who we wanted these characters to be.”
As a mother, Snook found a close connection with her character. “I think that was something that was interesting for me to approach, different from the character that most people know me from, is that she definitely wants to be a parent and wants to be a mom, wants to be present as being a mom,” the actress shares. “But I think that’s something that’s a part of me as well. It probably doesn’t come out in this so much because of the content and the thriller aspect and what she’s dealing with. But I wanted to be able to play a character that is closer to me in terms of warmth.”
As she says, Marissa’s warm personality is worlds apart from Succession’s ruthless Shiv Roy, whom Snook describes as being “internally kind of cold and very stiff and presented. And Marissa, there’s warmth. And so much of it came from costuming. We’ve got knits and we’ve got cozy jumpers, and we’ve got things that . . . kind of like we’re trying to find a way to keep that warmth alive — even though she’s going through the hellscape of having her child go missing.”
So how would Shiv react if she found herself in Marissa’s shoes? “Oh, that’s a good one,” Snook responds. “How would she react? I mean, there would be so much arm’s-length distance parenting from Shiv that she would barely be involved with the child, but then having the child taken away . . . she’d call in all the favours. She would throw money at the situation and probably get it resolved.”
All Her Fault airs Thursday, November 27 on Showcase