Succession directors did not know about Shiv's pregnancy when they filmed her big fight with Tom
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When Succession directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini filmed that awful argument between Sarah Snook's Shiv and Matthew Macfadyen's Tom on Sunday's episode, the pair did not fully understand the level of awfulness the bust-up would feature when the show screened. In the course of the fight, Tom tells his wife that she is "maybe not a good person to have children," a statement which clearly devastates the pregnant Shiv. In the world of Succession, Tom is unaware that Shiv is having a baby and, in real-life, the directors were also ignorant of this fact when they shot the episode.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Berman explains that she and Pulcini did not know that Shiv was pregnant on the HBO drama at the time because the episode 4 scene in which Snook's character learns this information had yet to be written.
"We knew that Sarah was pregnant," she says. "But we didn't know that Shiv was going to be pregnant. We didn't have that specific piece of information when we shot it."
David Russell/HBO Matthew Macfadyen's Tom and Sarah Snook's Shiv on 'Succession'
Succession creator Jesse Armstrong subsequently told the pair that the pregnancy would be written into the series, but, Berman says, "we didn't know when the audience was going to find out."
Pulcini and Berman previously spoke with EW about shooting the savage showdown between Tom and Shiv.
"It wasn't as time-consuming as I thought it was going to be, because they're so keyed in to how these people respond to each other," said Pulcini. "I was worried that we might need a whole day for it or something. But we did leave them on the terrace alone for a while, while they ran lines, which became a private rehearsal for them, and they worked some things out. We were seeing them through the glass as we were shooting other things or doing other things. We could see where it was going and then they kind of auditioned it for us. Yeah, both of them are just remarkable, they're just remarkable actors."
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