“Succession” Star Sarah Snook Has Said “It Would Be Far Too Dangerous” For Her Mental Health If She Cared About Her Looks As She Recalled Being Chastised For Eating Cake On A Movie Set
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It’s fair to say that Sarah Snook is enjoying a serious career high at the moment.
Earlier this month, she won her second Golden Globe for her performance as Shiv Roy in the HBO series Succession, which aired its final season last year.
On Sunday, she won a Critics’ Choice award for the same role, and she is also nominated for an Emmy and Screen Actors Guild award in upcoming ceremonies.
However, Sarah’s career certainly hasn’t always been this glittering, with the Australian actor opening up about being branded a “nobody” and cruelly body-shamed while shooting one of her early films in a new interview.
Speaking to Time, Sarah recalled being humiliated in front of the cast and crew as she was chastised for eating a slice of chocolate cake. This was after she had already been belittled by the movie’s casting director, who had told her that most of the team didn’t even want her on the project.
After being offered the part, Sarah said that she was told: “We don’t really want you because you’re a nobody, but the director and the writer think you’re good for the role."
She was then given a detailed plan of how they intended to make her more “marketable” by changing her appearance. Quoting the casting director, Sarah said: “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.”
She went on to tell Time that she did not question these harsh comments in the moment and accepted the role because she figured: “In order for me to be successful, I have to be all the things that aren’t me.”
The publication reports that Sarah then looked “furious” as she recounted what happened when shooting for this movie — which she did not name — actually began.
Sarah said that while on set one day she had “the tiniest bit of chocolate cake,” and a producer chastised her for the indulgence in front of all of the cast and crew. In the end, a costume designer came to Sarah’s defense and encouraged her to continue eating — with Sarah admitting that she was “dying inside.”
She then said that being treated as though she couldn’t make her own decisions was “infantilizing,” asking: “Why would we do that to women?”
At this point in her career, Sarah already had a complicated relationship with her appearance. She told Time that she spent her teen years believing that she was “completely, abhorrently unattractive,” which made her “create good character instead.”
But she started to receive attention from men after losing “a bunch of weight” in her early 20s when she was cast as a prisoner of war in a TV movie.
Sarah said that, despite knowing it was “fucked up,” she was left thinking: “I must maintain this shape at all costs, and I’m only worthwhile as an object in the eyes of another person by being a shape that is appreciable to them.”
Sarah overcame this mindset as she got older, realizing that “it would be far too dangerous” for her mental health if she cared too deeply about her looks.
“I very purposefully have tried not to put my worth to myself into how I look because if you do, and one gets celebrated for that, when that goes — which it will — then what’s your worth?” she explained. “It’s better to feel like one looks like shit but not to think that it matters, than to feel that one looks beautiful and that that’s your value.”
And appearing on the cover of a magazine provided Sarah with a wake-up call that solidified this mindset. She said: “All I wanted to do was be on the cover of a magazine, like, wow, wouldn’t that be amazing? I could say, ‘See, I am beautiful in the eyes of the world.’”
“But then the fucking thing came out, and I had a real problem with it,” Sarah added, revealing that she had been digitally retouched beyond recognition. “I thought, ‘That isn’t me. I don’t look like that.’”
“I’d always had the feeling of ‘Oh, I wish I was beautiful, I don’t look like the girls in the magazines.' But when you are the girl in the magazine, and you still don’t look like her — or feel like you do — it’s worse,” she concluded.
Sarah has been acting since 2009, but it was Succession that made her a household name after its premiere in 2018. Speaking to Time, she admitted that she almost didn’t accept the role because the glossy character of Shiv is so unlike herself, but it’s safe to say that she ultimately made the right decision.
Sarah has repeatedly credited Succession with changing her life, and has nothing but positive things to say about the cast and crew that she worked with.
With the set thankfully proving to be a far cry from the aforementioned movie that saw her scolded for eating cake, Sarah honored Succession in a moving Instagram tribute after the series finale aired last May.
“To have been blessed to join this crazy adventure of a show will be a career highlight, which will no doubt be hard to top,” she began.
“The friendships, the scripts, the locations, the one liners, the early mornings, the last-minute changes, all the highs and lows: I’m going to miss it all,” Sarah continued. “The people of this show are a talented bunch, and I’m proud to have worked alongside them, it’s the people I will miss most of all.”
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