This article contains some spoilers for “All Her Fault.”
For Sarah Snook, having to leave her then-2-year-old daughter to go to work every day on the Peacock drama “All Her Fault” was, in a way, helpful for her acting process.
In the show, streaming Thursday, Snook plays Marissa Irvine, a Chicago businesswoman who goes to pick up her young son Milo from a playdate and discovers not only is she at the wrong house, but Milo was never there in the first place. The fellow mom (Dakota Fanning) she thought was picking him up from school has no idea what she’s talking about, neither does the homeowner, and Milo has gone missing.
“It was useful to kind of use my daughter,” she says in a video call. “What would it be like to have the situation happen to me? I understand that more in depth now being a parent.”
But Snook could only go so far. She couldn’t picture her daughter in place of Milo. If she had she would have just decided not to work. “It’s too hard, it’s too much,” she says.
“All Her Fault” is a twisty eight-episode thriller with some gasp-worthy moments that takes its depiction of motherhood — and the blame women place on themselves when something goes awry — very seriously. The title is not exactly accurate as it applies to Snook’s character or Jenny, played by Fanning, the other parent unwittingly drawn into this nightmare scenario.
“It cannot be just her fault, that’s just not possible,” Snook says. “We explore what the mental load is oftentimes for women to take on in a parenting role.”
Both these working mothers worry they, above anyone else, bear the guilt for Milo’s disappearance — in part because they care about their careers as well as their children. Marissa doesn’t double-check the number that informed her that Milo was having a playdate with Jenny’s son. Meanwhile Jenny, a book marketer, hired Carrie Finch (Sophia Lillis), the nanny who turns out to be responsible for the kidnapping.
That’s one of the reasons creator Megan Gallagher was keen to adapt Andrea Mara’s novel for television.
“Within that material was this maternal guilt and this discrepancy in domestic labor tasks in heterosexual couples that, to me, is just this huge issue,” she says. “Every woman I know, who is roughly my age, is dealing with this. Every woman I know drops off their kid at school and sobs in the parking lot before they make it to work.”
After years of playing the icy Shiv Roy on “Succession,” whose pregnancy in the final season ultimately seems like another business maneuver for her, Snook was drawn to Marissa, who does care about being a good parent.
“I wanted to find a character that was just inherently warm,” Snook explains. “Shiv is in a similar kind of world, but she’s inherently cold. She wants to be warm but she can’t. Whereas Marissa is just a nice, warm, friendly person who has a maternal quality naturally about her and sees someone upset and goes, ‘I got you.’”
That’s how she initially meets Jenny. They bond, feeling mutually ill at ease in the bathroom at a school function while, coincidentally, wearing the same dress. After Milo goes missing, Marissa could easily turn on Jenny, but instead they develop a deeper connection.
“It was really nice to portray the really positive aspects of female friendship,” Fanning says on a separate call. “I think sometimes there can be tropes of the women pitted against each other.”
Marissa and Jenny have the kind of bond that Fanning recognizes in her own life: “Actually really supportive and loving and people that you lean on when times get tough as opposed to turn against.”
For Snook, Marissa and Jenny’s connection is almost elemental.
“That harks to Greek mythology or those ancient stories,” she says. “In the end women just kind of have to stick together.”
Fanning, who does not have children, did not have the personal experiences of motherhood to draw upon in her role, but it was not hard for her to imagine the pressure Jenny must be under in the series.
“I’ve always wanted to be a mother,” she says. “I’m someone who put a blanket under my shirt and pretended I was pregnant at like 5 years old. I’ve never questioned that I want that.”
She adds she’s been in nurturing positions her entire life — to her younger sister Elle, and to the daughters of her best friend, who are 5 and 2, as their godmother.
“I drew inspiration from people in my life, from my own experiences, sometimes even the pressure that I put on my own mom as a 31-year-old daughter,” she says, laughing. “Some self-reflection of, hm, I may be guilty of some of these things toward her as well.”
On screen, however, Jenny is as much defined by her love for her child, and support for Marissa, as she is for her dedication to her career. She’s in the middle of chasing a high-profile author, much to the frustration of her husband Richie (Thomas Cocquerel), who shirks caretaking duties.
Gallagher says the writers spent a lot of time talking about Jenny and her profession.
“I really like showing that women are unapologetically passionate about their work, and that’s OK for us to love our work,” Gallagher says. “Nobody is supposed to love their work more than their own children, but it’s OK for our kids to not be enough and for us to need work to be fulfilled.”
But that doesn’t mean that either Marissa or Jenny are portrayed as uncaring moms. They are both deeply devoted to their sons.
“Usually, when we portray women in media, if they are successful then they must not be maternal,” Snook says. That stands in counter to Snook’s own experiences, she adds.
“For me, personally, I feel like my recent success and career is somewhat related directly to becoming a mother, because of the new perspectives, the deepening of empathy, the strength gained from experience to go, oh no, I got this. I can really trust myself in this decision and I can really back myself here.”
Snook also serves as an executive producer on “All Her Fault,” which was filmed in Melbourne, Australia, so she could be near her daughter and her stepson, who is in school in the city. Counter to most of the men on the series, Snook’s husband, actor Dave Lawson, was able to take on parenting responsibilities, bringing their tot to set so they could play during lunchtimes.
“There were toys on set because I had a fake kid on set,” she says. “There was a playground on set. She probably thinks that every set she goes to when she visits mum at work there’s always going to be a little mini playground, and toys to play with and that’s not going to be the case, honey.”
Despite the intensity of the material, Snook describes the “All Her Fault” production as a place where cast members were joking and messing around to counteract the sadness their characters were enduring.
Similarly, after a day in Marissa’s skin, she had to make sure her own work didn’t interfere with her home life. Snook was dealing with the kind of calculations that mothers have to make all the time, the very thing the show itself is addressing.
“When we were doing hard days at work and you’re crying every day, the best thing to do is to go home and give your daughter a cuddle, because all the oxytocin and all that yumminess comes back,” she says. “It’s not useful if mom comes home and she’s whipping her back or trying to stay in this character. To drop it is really useful for me so that you can fill your cup again.”
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