Succession star chewed out by a producer for eating cake on set
THE actress Sarah Snook, who played Shiv Roy in Succession, has revealed that she was “told off ” by a producer for eating “the tiniest bit” of chocolate cake on a film set.
Snook, 36 – a Golden Globe-winner who is a household name thanks to the hit drama – lamented the infantilisation of women in the industry, as well as its unrealistic beauty standards.
On the set of an unnamed film she claimed a casting agent 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.”
Snook told The Sunday Times magazine that she agreed to the changes, telling herself that she was being professional.
“In order for me to be successful I have to be all the things that aren’t me,” she said of her thought process. “And then one particular day I had the tiniest bit of chocolate cake.”
A producer told her off in front of the entire cast and crew, she claimed, before an indignant costume designer intervened to urge her to keep eating it.
“And all the while I am dying inside,” she added.
“The infantilising of women, to not be able to make their own decisions, why would we do that to women?”
Snook will soon star in The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London; a one-woman show in which she plays 26 characters.
The Oscar Wilde story of a handsome gentleman who sells his soul in exchange for eternal youth has led her to reflect on the theme of beauty.
“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 told the magazine.
The Picture of Dorian Gray opens on Feb 6.