As if we weren’t still recovering from Succession‘s final episode, there’s huge news in the personal life of the lady of the hour, Shiv Roy.
And by ‘Shiv Roy’ we actually mean Sarah Snook.
The Australian actress finally let slip that she welcomed her baby some time since we last saw her sporting a baby bump at the Succession season four premiere.
The ‘announcement’ was made rather cryptically: with only a glimpse of a baby’s head in a social media post about the Succession finale.
Following a lengthy caption detailing her gratitude for her time on the HBO series, Snook dropped a little hint at her new life, post-show.
“I just watched the final episode of the final season of something that has changed my life. And now, my life has changed again. Thank you for all the love and support,” she shared.
The announcement came as Succession dropped its high-drama finale, in which we finally found what happened to the Waystar Royco (now GoJo) power players. Naturally, Shiv got her shining moment—though we won’t say how.
(While we dare not give spoilers here, we did pull together some of the internet’s best responses to the surprising denouement.)
Along with her ‘baby announcement’, Snook wrote that the end of the series “breaks my heart”.
“It’s hard to express what this show has meant to me. The places I got to go, the immense talent I got to work with…it breaks my heart that it is all over. But my heart had to be this full of all the memories, good times, challenges and triumphs, to be able to break at all…so that makes me grateful,” she wrote.
“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. I am so, so proud and humbled by everyone’s hard work season after season: we all set the bar high for each other, then exceeded it and excelled, in every department. 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. 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.”
Earlier this year, Snook announced her pregnancy in the most Shiv-approved way possible: the red carpet. Because Shiv is nothing without her penchant for strategic announcements.
The Australian actress took to the black carpet at the show’s season four premiere with her husband Dave Lawson to announce that they’re expecting their first child.
Deviating from Shiv’s classic power suits, the star was clearly taking a page out of Rihanna’s maternity fashion reign by not shying away from embracing her baby bump.
For the occasion, the 35-year-old opted for a plunging, spaghetti-strap black jumpsuit with flared wide-leg pants and a glistening silver cover-up.
If the silver ensemble is signalling that the Roy children could potentially end up in second place in the series’ finale then bring us the popcorn and roll the show: this season’s fight will be the show-down of the century.
Of course, the season premiere wouldn’t be complete without a photo-op with Shiv and Tom, aka Sarah Snook and Matthew Macfadyen.
Opening up to marie claire Australia for our May 2023 cover interview, the Australian star revealed she very nearly turned down the role of Shiv.
“I wasn’t entirely enamoured with the character, I didn’t foresee how I could play her and didn’t love being the only female in a sea of white men in business suits,” she told us. “I wondered what avenue of storytelling there would be for her. I thought, ‘What am I doing, going for this role? It’s not me, I don’t know that world, I don’t like those kinds of characters, how do I play this?’ I was OK with the idea of it going away.”
So what made her change her mind? “They came back and offered more money!” How very Shiv Roy of her, after all.
Succession is available to stream on BINGE. Stream all four seasons on BINGE with a 10-day free trial now.
