It seems there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Sarah Snook shot her heartbreaking scene after the show’s biggest plot twist. Mark Mylod said series creator Jesse Armstrong was also incredibly touched by the actress’ heartbreaking interpretation of his words. Although he wrote the scene himself, he too was deeply shocked.
“I’ve found [it] incredibly powerful,” Mylod recalled in an interview with Vanity Fair. Jesse and I, with this take, were standing next to each other in front of the monitor and I just had tears streaming down my face, and I could see from my peripheral vision that he was the same. I was completely overwhelmed by her and so impressed.”
It’s how Snook plays out Shiv’s helpless desperation in this scene, “the search to control what you can’t control and this regression to childhood”, as Mylod put it, which moves the viewer to the tears. There’s a rare vulnerability about Shiv that permeates every part of her, from her wavering voice to her hunched back.
But it wasn’t just those watching the scene who were overwhelmed by Snook’s emotion. His stage partner Alan Ruck, who plays his older half-brother, Connor Roy, also had a strong reaction to his co-star. In fact, he used the brutality of his performance to motivate his own.
“I was taught a long time ago that you just have to accept the fact that your performance will come from all the other characters around you if you’re just open to what’s going on,” Ruck explained in a look at inside the episode. . “And when Sarah came to tell me, and Sarah was a puddle, you know, so it was like it was game over. You don’t have to act.”