(Warning: Spoilers ahead for Sunday night’s episode of Succession.)
There’s a moment in Sunday night’s bombshell episode of Succession that I can’t get out of my head—or my heart. After Kendall (Jeremy Strong) rushes to get his sister Shiv (Sarah Snook) to the private room where he and Roman (Kieran Culkin) are dealing with their family crisis, Roman hands her his phone and tells her that they think their father is dead.
“No,” she says, holding the phone like it’s a foreign object she had never seen before. She looks at it with an overwhelmed, stunned expression, as if she were staring at her father’s corpse through it. “I can’t have that.”
I can’t have that.
This is the line that absolutely gutted me, especially as delivered by Snook, who, the internet decreed absolutely must win an Emmy for her performance.
Sunday night’s shocking episode essentially exploded the water cooler. The big twist: Logan Roy (Brian Cox) died while on a private plane to Sweden for a business meeting. He was, at the last minute, skipping out on his son Connor’s (Alan Ruck) wedding, where the rest of the Roy siblings were when they received the news.
There’s something so corporate-speak about “I can’t have that.” It’s a phrase someone powerful would say in response to a boardroom decision they don’t like, or an assistant telling them they won’t be able to fulfill a request. You could cynically read into that line being Shiv’s instinct, the first thing that comes out of her mouth when her guard crashes down like an anvil after receiving such news: these children are so screwed up that they’re programmed to react to personal tragedy with boss-lady dictives.
But that’s not what’s happening. In a matter of seconds, Shiv processes the words that, no matter how much preparation a person does, there’s no managing the reaction to: “They think dad died.”
It’s a complicated, seemingly contradictory feeling of immediately understanding the gravity and the reality of what you just heard and what that means, while needing to be in disbelief and denial, almost as a form of self-care. “I can’t have that” isn’t a business-like dismissal of the news; it’s maybe the most honest—with herself and with her siblings—that Shiv has ever been. After everything she’s been through in her life and especially with her father, she can’t have him die. Not now. She’s not ready.
I don’t think I’ve seen an episode deal with the real-time grappling of a family death in such a recognizable way. In one hour, Succession captures the confusion, shell-shocked feeling, and instinct to leap into planning mode. There’s the impulse to not want to do anything but feel the grief, and the impulse to do any task that will distract from it—and they’re in a constant battle.
The entire cast is brilliant in the episode, but Snook is exceptional. From that initial reaction, to her brittle strength while trying to figure out what to do next with her family, to her quiet and tortured moment with her estranged husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), and especially her reading of the official statement of Logan’s passing to the press: She nails every beat, capturing the floating emotional nakedness of a person reeling, while retaining Shiv’s need to retain composure and control at all times.
In the hours after the episode aired, “Sarah Snook Emmy” was trending on Twitter. Here’s a sampling of the praise:
The people have spoken. Emmy voters, you’re next.
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