Succession star Sarah Snook says a movie producer once chastised her for eating cake, and a casting director once called her a “nobody.”
The acclaimed Emmy-nominated HBO star described the cruel mistreatment during a new interview in Sunday’s The Times U.K.
Snook recalled that after getting a film role (she did not name the movie), its casting director told her, “We don’t really want you because you’re a nobody, but the director and the writer think you’re good for the role. So, 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.”
The Australian actress said she agreed to everything, figuring, “In order for me to be successful, I have to be all the things that aren’t me.”
The Times interviewer said “anger edges into her tone” and that Snook “looks furious” when she recalled the following, “And then one particular day I had the tiniest bit of chocolate cake.” Snook said that a producer chastised her for the cake in front of the cast and crew, and then a costume designer intervened and encouraged her to keep eating it anyway. “All the while I am dying inside.”
“The infantilizing of women, to not be able to make their own decisions, why would we do that to women?” Snook asked.
Last week, Snook won her second Golden Globe for her role as Shiv Roy in Succession and is nominated for an Emmy at Monday’s prime-time ceremony.
Snook was promoting her West End one-woman production of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The show incredibly has Snook playing all 26 parts.
Snook concluded by recalling a podcast she heard that proclaimed the secret to happiness. “It really rang true for me,” she said. “What’s the secret to happiness? What is it? We all want to know, right? And it boiled down to three words: ‘Other people matter.’”