Sarah Snook’s real-life pregnancy changed the course of a pivotal Succession finale scene

It’s been two whole months since the Roy siblings were officially cast out of the kingdom, but it will be a long, long time before any of us stop thinking about Succession and that explosive, perfect series finale.

This deep nostalgia goes tenfold for Sarah Snook, who recently gave her first interview (before the strike) since the finale and is—pretty understandably given the level of improv that seemed to be happening at all times on set—still speaking in first person as if she were truly Shiv herself. (“I will always be pushed out,” she said of Shiv’s final position as newly-crowned CEO Tom Wambsgan’s miserable other half.)

In addition to discussing that now-infamous hand hold (“It’s neither in nor it’s out. It’s sort of succumbing to the power shift”), and her shock at the show actually ending, something she says didn’t know until the very last table read, Snook also revealed to Variety that her real-life pregnancy played an integral part in the show’s finale—even further than the arc it inspired for her character.

For those who have yet to watch the finale (hopefully no one at this point), Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) end up wrestling on the floor of a Waystar boardroom after Shiv’s refusal to vote Kendall for CEO inspires her brother to do the same. In the original script, however, this fight was supposed to be between Kendall and Shiv—potentially escalating with the latter “pulling a phone out and throwing it at Kendall”, according to Snook.

Due to Snook’s pregnancy and Strong and Culkin’s Method, however, the scene largely came down to the instincts of these three unbelievably talented actors who had been living with these characters and knew how they’d really act in the moment.

“We had a choreography rehearsal between Jeremy and I. And then on the day, I felt good about being able to advocate for myself, going, ‘Let’s just remember this is a fight scene that we haven’t really properly rehearsed that we’re sort of feeling out with a pregnant woman,’” Snook recalled. “I feel safe, but Jeremy doesn’t like to rehearse, and I’m going to respect that to a point—but I’m not going to keep my mouth shut when I’m pregnant and we’re going into a fight scene.”

In the cut that eventually made it into the episode, Shiv moves to exit the argument and Kendall grabs her, a reaction that felt “far more honest and realistic,” according to Snook.

“Up until that point we’d rehearsed—but the instinct from Kieran as Kieran as much as it was from Roman is like, ‘Get your fucking hands off her. She’s pregnant!’ And then leaps on him,” she continued. “And so it really made sense, so much more sense, that she would just be like, ‘Whoa—it is just boys, like wrestling boys. This is again, childhood.’ So it ended up being fine in terms of my safety, and much better in terms of the scene.”

This was far from the only time Snook says the actors real lives bled into their characters by the end. In a cut scene from the siblings’ time in Barbados, the actor recalled swimming with Culkin but it feeling “sort of like Sarah and Kieran just as much as it was Roman and Shiv” chatting about pregnancy: “‘What’s it like having big bazoombas? Do you feel like you’re going to fall over?’ And Shiv was like, ‘No. Not high on the list of concerns.’”

“It was such a beautiful scene to shoot, because we’re swimming in the Caribbean ocean and talking about being pregnant with one of my dear friends,” she concluded.

You can read Snook’s full interview here.