SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for all eight episodes of “All Her Fault,” now streaming on Peacock.
The wild ride that is Peacock’s “All Her Fault” stars Sarah Snook and Jake Lacy as Marissa and Peter Irvine, ultra-wealthy Chicago parents of 5-year-old Milo (Duke McCloud) driven to the edge when he’s kidnapped. That Milo’s kidnapper is Carrie (Sophia Lillis), the nanny of another couple at their private school, sets off a series of events that, by the end of “All Her Fault,” have completely unraveled the Irvines’ lives. To say the least! In the finale of the limited series — created by Megan Gallagher, from Andrea Mara’s 2021 novel of the same name — Marissa has murdered (yes, murdered!) Peter in order to protect herself and Milo.
“All Her Fault” is Snook’s first television role since she won the drama lead actress Emmy for the final season of “Succession,” and since winning both an Olivier and a Tony award for the feat of playing all 26 characters in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” on stage. (She filmed “All Her Fault” in Melbourne, Australia, her home base, in between the play’s first run on the West End and its move Broadway last spring.) As an executive producer on the show, as well as its star, Snook tells Variety that she was attracted to “All Her Fault” because she’d “never done a thriller — I’ve never really dived into this world.” The character, who is under duress from the show’s first minute, also posed an acting challenge, she says, because she “wanted to see what it’s like to live inside a harrowing moment.”
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“Also, I read the book,” Snook says. “And it’s got a plot twist that just couldn’t say no to, you know?” That’s actually plot twists, plural. With its cliffhanger endings, and gasp-inducing reveals, “All Her Fault” joins recent thrillers such as “The Hunting Wives,” “Paradise” and “Presumed Innocent” as chaotic new entries in the 2.0 version of OMG TV.
A synopsis: the blast radius from Milo’s kidnapping causes chaos among the Irvines, specifically with Peter’s siblings, Lia (Abby Elliott) and Brian (Daniel Monks). Their family mythology — an insidious fiction of Peter’s, as it turns out — is that, during their early childhood, Lia had caused an accident that’s left Brian disabled and in chronic pain. The fallout changed all of their lives: A guilt-ridden Lia has continuously struggled with addiction, Brian is depressed and has no self-worth — and both of them rely on Peter for their livelihoods. But then, in the show’s sixth episode, Peter finally confesses that he was the one who had tripped Brian when they were kids. This revelation is significant, because it shows Marissa that Peter is willing to lie about just about anything.
Including the fact that Milo isn’t their biological son! Which Marissa discovers in the most batshit possible way. Five years earlier, during their drive home from the hospital after Milo’s birth, Peter and Marissa were in a horrific car wreck with another car, driven by a young mother named Josie (Carrie’s real name) and carrying her infant son, both of whom survived the accident. In the finale, Peter admits to Marissa, who had been knocked unconscious in the crash, that he had switched Josie’s living baby with their newborn who’d been killed.
Years later, Carrie figured this out after meeting Milo, immediately establishing a connection with him and realizing that he too has synesthesia (long story!). Yes, it’s a stretch, but the mentally unstable Carrie is in fact correct, and, after becoming fixated on the idea that her baby had lived through the crash, poses as a nanny for Jenny (Dakota Fanning) — a parent at Milo’s school — so she can infiltrate Milo’s life.
But before Carrie can expose Peter to Marissa as the villain he really is — that is, not only a baby-snatcher himself, but a killer who’d also bludgeoned Carrie’s father (and fellow kidnapper) to death — Peter shoots Carrie in their living room. Milo had just been “found,” because Peter had taken him from the motel room where Carrie and her dad were keeping him, leaving the child in a car to be turned into a police station. Carrie’s dad had recorded his interaction with Peter (including the murder!); rather than let Carrie play the recording, Peter silences her at any cost. Marissa does listen afterward, but what’s she to do? Peter is right that the police will take Milo away, should Marissa tell them what he’s done.
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So as you can see, Marissa is really in a bind. But the Chekhov’s gun of “All Her Fault” is Peter’s deadly allergy to soy. After subbing out his EpiPen with an expired one, and getting rid of the First Aid kit in their car, Marissa she deliberately kisses him …. after just eating soy-filled food. And then she watches him intently as he goes into anaphylaxis — at first seeming like she wants to help, and then revealing her clear purpose. And Detective Alcaraz (Michael Peña) even figures it out eventually, but because he’s done some morally questionable things for the sake of his own son, he tells Marissa he won’t come after her for murdering Peter.
Whew! Right? In its final moments, “All Her Fault” deliberately gives the finger to its title, and ends with the pleasingly matriarchal image of Marissa and Jenny (who’s also gotten rid of her husband, though not via crimes) drinking wine and looking lovingly at their two sons playing together.
In an interview this week, Snook talks about choosing the role of Marissa, what the show’s final shot means to her and what the most recent message on the “Succession” group chat is.
This is your first TV acting role after “Succession.” What was it that about this project and the part itself that made you want to do it?
“Succession” is a career-defining highlight that I really have had to work hard to put into a separate category — it’s not something that can be repeated. There’s no trying to find projects that are going to be like “Succession” — “Succession” is its own thing, and I’d like to keep it that way!
But I’d never done a thriller. I’ve never really dived into this world. They’re a popular genre at the moment, and I wanted to see what it’s like to live inside a harrowing moment. Like, what is the sustainability of doing that as an actor? Also, I read the book, and it’s got a plot twist that just couldn’t say no to, you know?
I read the book to prepare for this, and the ending is very different — it’s just a news article about Peter’s death six months later from an allergy attack abroad. Were you talking to Megan Gallagher about the kinds of things she was changing to fill out that ending?
I respectfully let Megan take the lead on that, obviously, and she’s such a brilliant writer, and had really expanded the universe of what the book offers. There’s the novel that explores it in different ways, and it’s set in Dublin — and then we’ve got the series that is set in Chicago and really goes into different worlds.
Changing the ending in the ways that we did — obviously, the major part isn’t changed as much. But having Marissa have that last say was really important to wrapping up our story.
Let’s go into the spoilers! So at the beginning of the finale, Marissa learns that Peter is not only is a literal murderer, but that he’d switched Milo — I can barely say this — with their infant who had died in the car accident. How do you even approach figuring out how a person would deal with such revelations?
Exactly! How do you begin? It felt very Greek tragedy to me. It felt very much like these are gods and deities fooling around with human lives, and making bad decisions. Marissa definitely had to have the last word, I think. In the book, it’s a quiet final moment — an allusion to Peter dying via poisoning. But here, it’s much more activated for Marissa to take back the control of her own narrative.
And dealing with the revelation that Milo isn’t her son — if it was real life, you receive that information, and it doesn’t all sink in in that one moment. There’s going to be something beyond Episode 8 and the show’s final moments: The revelations will still continue to sink in, and the shock will still continue to ricochet for Marissa and for Milo. Fortunately, she has the friendship of Jenny to find strength from.
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You alluded to this, but in “All Her Fault,” there are so many scenes of heightened emotion — within five minutes, she’s found out that her child is missing, and that pitch is sustained over eight episodes. Yet “Succession” was so singularly restrained. What was your experience of that?
Yeah, I mean, that’s part of the reason I said yes, and I wanted to be a part of the project as well. Shiv was such a restrained and repressed character emotionally. She had short outbursts of rage and other kind of bites. And also, her maternal instincts — who knows?
Whereas Marissa definitely, confidently, wants to be a mum. Always has wanted to be a mum! Always wanted to have that close family life. It’s something that she didn’t have growing up. We hear a little bit about her history. But she’s got a sort of small life with her husband, her brother-and-sister-in-law and her kid. And that’s what she likes. It’s cozy. And to have it all sort of blown up is — that’s a challenge coming in as an actor to think, “OK, we’re gonna have to sustain this for how long?” But it’s also a rewarding challenge.
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At first, it seems like maybe Marissa is going to have to stay quiet about all the things Peter did, because, as he says, she’s scared that Milo will be taken away from her. Did you decide for yourself when it is that Marissa decides to kill Peter?
Yeah, there’s a moment in the scene with Jenny. It’s one of those things where you kind of go, “OK, now there’s no turning back.” So the “now there’s no turning back” is the moment she’s just kissed him, I think. There’s turning back up until the deed is done.
I think she knows intuitively that she can’t have this revolting human being around her anymore, and have any kind of influence over her son. Imagine the custody battle with that man! So she knows that he has to go. He just has to go. And he deserves to.
But what does the future hold for Marissa if that truth ever comes to light? Which is why I really loved that scene with Detective Alcaraz, where he sort of infers that, yes, he knows everything, and yet still has the grace to tell her that he knows everything — and also to stand back and say, but I’m gonna let it go.
You don’t have a line in that scene, I think! What was that like to play with Michael Peña?
It’s amazing. I mean, acting is always reacting and listening, and so there may not be actual lines, but there’s all sorts of things going on in her head. Listening to these revelations and calculating, “OK, am I safe? Am I not? Is this good for me? Is this bad for me?” And just getting to watch Michael Peña act is great.
The scene when Marissa kills Peter by kissing him with her soy-infected mouth — can you talk about filming that with Jake Lacy as Marissa watches Peter die?
It’s a really complex scene to approach, because you don’t want to lean into melodrama or histrionic kind of, like, “Die!” — like throwing the eyebrows up and eyeballs down. There’s just so much release going on, and it’s a very complex, very difficult scene to play. And hopefully we got the tone right, but it was one I was worried about.
And it seems like she doesn’t want to indicate too early to him that she’d done it on purpose in case, maybe, someone is about to appear with an EpiPen or something.
Yeah, absolutely.
But it’s so clear in those final moments, when he’s looking at her and she glares at him, and says, “That’s true — I manage your allergy for you.” Were there other versions when she reveals it earlier?
Probably in the edit there were times when in enacting it, there’s indications earlier. But it’s better for tension to leave it right to the last minute, because you want to know, “Is he gonna die knowing? Is he gonna die not knowing?” There’s much more tension in that. I think.
I mean, he sure dies knowing! In the final scene, when Jacob and Milo are playing as Marissa and Jenny are watching — hilarious. Can you talk about that scene, and how you decided to play it?
You have to be able to breathe out with a story like this. You’ve got to be able to go, (exhales), “Oh, OK.” Like, everything’s probably gonna be OK. You have to find, what’s the rainbow here? And the risk is to make something too shiny and too wrapped up and too like, “Aha! Now the two friends can be friends forever, and what’s gonna happen next?”
So we had to try and strike a balance between too shiny and also realistic. But realistically, what Marissa and Jenny really found in their friendship was that it was the strongest bond in their lives. So for me, it totally made sense: I’m gonna move as close as I can to create a community, to really, to really start again in the way that I’m in control of my own narrative.
CouSarah Enticknap/PEACOCK
By the end of the show, Marissa has murdered her husband — which she’s gotten away with — after she has learned that her son was stolen from the woman who’d kidnapped him. This is all traumatic! What do you think Marissa would do next?
It’s crazy. I mean, for a little while, just deal with the whiplash of all those revelations. I think at some point Milo is going to have to know or find out, or he’s going to cotton onto something, and she has to support him in the dealing of grief of losing his father. He’s gotta get over all the trauma of being away from us, and being kidnapped. But then also, he’s going to deal with the grief of losing his father as a 5-year-old. And the difficulty for Marissa to uphold which memory: The memory of this amazing dad, the one that Milo remembers? Or the real truth of who Peter really was. And that’s going to be difficult for Marissa.
Marissa is extremely rich, which is Shiv Roy-like, though the characters are so different. Did you ever think of Shiv as you were creating Marissa?
Only in the sense of like that they’re wealthy characters. I think Shiv is in a different category. She’s in this astronomical wealth elite, whereas Marissa is more socially wealthy and you might meet her on the street. You wouldn’t meet Shiv on the street.
No, Shiv doesn’t go on the street!
I think Marissa is more of a reflection of myself, maybe — much more personable, warm. Whereas Shiv is much more of a cold-hearted bitch. She’s a different kind of stern character.
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What do you think Marissa sees in Jenny that creates that immediate bond? I mean, she really risks her well-being by telling Jenny what Peter did.
I think she sees a comrade, a compatriot. In the shooting of the scene in the bathroom — where they turn up in the same dress — we had to make sure that that was a really believable rapport-building, grounding, beginning of a friendship. That you go, “I really like that person.”
Some people just have chemistry, and you can’t fake it; Marissa and Jenny, they have chemistry. They go well together. And this is a kind of circumstance that, unfortunately, has thrown them together. But they found real strength and empowerment from each other. And yeah, it is a risk to let her know what her plans are regarding Peter. But in some ways, you kind of have just got to offload, and share it with somebody. Maybe that’s the takeaway — keeping secrets to yourself is often doomed to fail.
Courtesy of HBO
“Cold-hearted bitch” as she was, I do miss Shiv! Do you ever find yourself imagining what she might be up to?
I think Jesse Armstrong, the creator, put it really well, when he said at one point, “I don’t really believe that people can change. They’re always going to be who they are, inevitably.” There’s an inevitability, I think, about people. And there’s something about that with Shiv, like she probably is still second next to Tom. In some ways, still in charge, and in some ways scratching, scrapping, reaching for — but always just missing out. And that’ll always be the source of great frustration and annoyance for her.
What was the last text on the “Succession” group chat?
Let me find out! I’ll see if I can say it — one second (looks at phone). It’s been active recently, because they all came to the show, and I sent them a smiley face with love hearts and a celebratory-like emoji. But Dag wrote, “Can’t wait to see you later, Sarah!” And Fisher (Stevens) was like, “Good luck! Wish I could be there, but not in New York.”
Boring! You filmed this in between your two stints of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Was it a relief to play one person instead of 26?
Yes! Although I don’t know if you could ever really describe this character — and what Marissa goes through — as a relief. But a different kind of compartmentalizing going on, yeah.
What’s next for you, do you know?
Don’t know yet! Other than that, at the end of this press tour, I am unemployed. (cackles) And I’m quite happy about it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
