Sarah Snook on the quirky project that brought her back home (2024)

With an Emmy win in January for Succession and an Olivier in April for her one-woman, 26-character performance in the London production of The Picture of Dorian Gray, it’s fair to say 2024 has been a big year for Sarah Snook.

“Yeah,” she says, “there’s the before, I guess, and there’s the after.”

It may not be on quite the same scale, but recording the narration for Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail, which opens the Melbourne International Film Festival on Thursday night, is another project close to her heart this year.

“I’ve always wanted to do character-based voiceover work, so when this came along, and it came in a sort of obtuse way, through my agent, but it got missed, and then it went through a friend of mine from the cinematographer, I was so grateful for it, because it’s such a charming little film.”

Snook voices Grace Pudel, who narrates the story of her life as a twin born with a cleft lip, orphaned early and subjected to such vicissitudes that she develops a hard outer layer, just like the snails she considers her best and sometimes only friends.

The stop-motion claymation film from Elliot, who won an Oscar for his short Harvie Krumpet in 2004, is dark and joyous, sad and uplifting, and an absolute delight.

With a voice cast that also includes Eric Bana, Magda Szubanski, Jacki Weaver, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tony Armstrong and Nick Cave, the film won the top prize at the prestigious Annecy Festival in France in June, and will play nationally from October 17.

“I really love its Australianness, and the thing I’m most proud of in that sense is how universal it is as well,” says Snook. “And in this age of AI and the general fear around that, to be part of something that is so human-made, so lovingly and slowly made, it’s like slow cooking to the Nth degree, with such detail and nuance and specificity and heart was really special.”

Snook is speaking in Melbourne, where she lives with her husband and fellow performer Dave Lawson and their 15-month-old daughter. The city has been home “for a while now”, the Adelaide-born actor says.

“Earlier on I just didn’t say where I live specifically, and that seemed to work. And that seems to be how I’ll continue, I suppose. Work is so international these days for everybody, geography shouldn’t be an impediment.”

Distance certainly didn’t stand in the way of her performing in the London production of Dorian Gray, the multimedia stage show based on Oscar Wilde’s novel, devised by Kip Williams for the Sydney Theatre Company.

The initial rehearsals took place in Melbourne, where much of the visual material (with Snook playing a host of other characters) was recorded before Christmas 2023.

Snook took a break for awards season, during which she was on the campaign trail in Los Angeles for the fourth and final season of Succession.

It was her third nomination for the role of Shiv Roy, the only daughter of the ruthless media clan, but her first in the lead actress category, for which she won. She then decamped to London for another three weeks of rehearsals ahead of a 14-week run.

Her daughter was six months old at the start of that journey, nine months old when performances began, and turned one before the season ended. And it was, she readily admits, utterly exhausting.

“It was like a two-hour running session every day,” she says. “I think if I had seen the show beforehand – and my husband says the same thing, because it’s a team decision when your kid’s that young – we both would have had different decision-making hats on.”

Does she mean she might not have done it?

“Potentially, yeah. I mean, ignorance is bliss.”

Speaking of not knowing what’s in store, Thursday night will be the first time Snook has seen Memoir of a Snail in its entirety.

“My American management team saw it recently and were raving about it. I just thought it was this quirky little Australian-centric film, but it really does touch me that it’s being so well received internationally.”

In a strange coincidence, this will be the second time Snook has starred in a MIFF opening-night film, the first coming a decade ago in the Spierig brothers’ time-travel sci-fi pic Predestination (a multi-part gender-bending role that perhaps prefigures Dorian Gray a little).

“They’re such different projects, different worlds, and while I don’t feel like a totally different person, it’s a nice sort of bookend,” she says. “Not that I hope this is the end. But it feels like a nice little chapter marker between drinks.”

The Melbourne International Film Festival runs August 8-25. Details miff.com.au
Memoir of a Snail releases nationally on October 17