Sarah Snook of ‘Succession’ Was Told Early in Her Career “You’re a Nobody”—But She Got the Last Laugh

A week ago tonight, Succession’s Sarah Snook won a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series—Drama, and tomorrow night she could very well take home an Emmy for Lead Actress in a Drama Series. It’s difficult now to imagine a world without Snook and her character, Shiv Roy, but had she listened to a (completely idiotic) casting agent earlier in her career, she might have quit the business altogether.

Snook told The Times that, on one of her very first films, she was told by a casting agent that they didn’t want her “because you’re a nobody.” (This business is brutal—unnecessarily so.) She was told “What we’ll do is change all of you so that you’re marketable. We’ll whiten your teeth, darken your hair, we’ll give you a personal trainer so you can lose weight and look the part.” Thankfully, the director and writer on the project pushed for her and she got the role.

On that same project, Snook revealed, per Deadline, that she ate a small piece of cake—and a producer told her off in front of the cast and crew. Meanwhile, a costume designer told her to keep eating. “And all the while I am dying inside,” she said.

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A (so far, as Snook is nowhere near done yet) career-defining role for the actress was that of Shiv, the only daughter of Logan Roy, a part she played for four seasons. Snook said she wept when the finale aired last May. “I was three or four weeks postpartum,” she said. “The hormones were raging. But it was just the chrysalis of knowing that’s the end of this really important, special part of my life.”

Next up for Snook? She’s taking on all 26 parts (!) in a production of The Portrait of Dorian Gray on London’s West End stage, continuing to prove that success is the best revenge.

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.