- A Parent’s Worst Nightmare: Emmy and Tony winner Sarah Snook stars in “All Her Fault,” a chilling new thriller about a mother whose young son vanishes after a playdate.
- Art Imitating Life: Snook reveals her real-life role as a mother was essential for the performance, stating, “I don’t think I would have been able to do this role before now.”
- More Than a Thriller: The series tackles dark social commentary on modern parenting, the unequal weight of domestic labor on women, and the danger of trial by media.
- Star-Studded Cast: The eight-part series also features Jake Lacy, Michael Pena, and Dakota Fanning in a story where anyone could be a suspect.
Snook Confronts Every Parent’s Darkest Fear
For any actor, channeling deep emotion is part of the job. But for Sarah Snook, her latest role in the domestic thriller “All Her Fault” forced her to confront a place no new parent ever wants to imagine. The series sees her play Marissa, a successful woman whose life shatters when her five-year-old son, Milo, disappears from a playdate. “It’s every parent’s worst nightmare,” Snook confessed on the set of the show.
Fresh off her acclaimed stage and screen victories, including a Tony Award for “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Snook is also an executive producer on the project. She admits that becoming a mother has fundamentally changed her craft, giving her access to an emotional depth she previously couldn’t grasp.
“I would have been able to imaginatively create something, but there’s a real difference between that and the depth of feeling that I now understand,” she explained. “There’s a wealth of emotion to draw on.”
A Role She Couldn’t Have Played Before
This isn’t Snook’s first time playing a mother, but she says her personal experience has made all the difference. She reflected on a past role where her character abandoned her son, a choice she understood from an actor’s perspective but now sees differently. “Had I been a parent at that time, I would probably have made different choices, with a different kind of depth,” she admitted. This newfound perspective adds a harrowing layer of authenticity to a role she says involves “crying, it turns out, in every scene.”
Unraveling a High-Stakes Mystery
Adapted from Andrea Mara’s 2021 novel, “All Her Fault” expands on the book’s domestic suspense. While the novel was largely confined to a “kitchen table,” the series broadens the world to the ritzy Chicago suburbs (filmed in Melbourne) to create a vast, needle-in-a-haystack search for the missing boy.
The story is a tense, accordion-like experience, moving between expansive cityscapes and intensely claustrophobic moments as Marissa and her husband Peter (Jake Lacy) are plunged into a world of suspicion.
A Web of Secrets and Lies
At its core, the series is a character study wrapped in the skin of a thriller. The frantic parents are surrounded by a gallery of characters who could be either supporters or suspects. From fellow parents and secretive nannies to business partners and even family members, everyone seems to be harboring secrets. The police investigation, led by Detective Alcaras (Michael Pena), struggles to find answers, forcing Marissa and Peter into the city’s underbelly.
Beyond the Kidnapping: A Dark Social Commentary
The title itself—”All Her Fault”—points to the show’s sharp social critique. Executive producer Nigel Marchant highlights how the story explores “the inequality of domestic labour” and the harsh judgment women face from the media and society. “It’s about us forming very quick decisions about people, and how the media can manipulate that,” he said.
For Snook, this commentary was a major draw. “In most households, the women doing full-time work tend to also pick up the majority of the household work… the mental load of that tends to fall to the female partner,” she observed. It’s this combination of a “propulsive thriller” and vital social commentary that makes “All Her Fault” a can’t-miss television event.
All Her Fault streams on Foxtel/Binge from November 7.