After four seasons on comedy-drama Succession, Australian actor Sarah Snook is swapping her corporate role as the daughter of a powerful media magnate for a much more sinister headline act as a troubled fertility doctor.

In the Australian-made psychological horror film, Run Rabbit Run, filmed on location throughout Melbourne, regional Victoria and in South Australia’s drought-stricken Riverland region, Snook, 35, plays a single mother who has a complex relationship with her seven-year-old daughter, Mia.

“You really can’t hope for a more instinctive, incredible actor than Sarah [Snook] … she looked amazing in the landscape as well, she’s just so talented,” says debut film director Daina Reid (The Handmaid’s Tale) of the 2008 National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) graduate.

Snook’s real-life mother role

In a recent appearance on American breakfast TV’s Today show, Snook, who was born and raised in Adelaide, revealed she was pregnant with her first child with husband and Australian comedian Dave Lawson (Utopia, 2014).

They accidentally fell in love after being friends first while bunkering down together during Melbourne’s long-running COVID-19 quarantine.

“I got stuck in Australia and had nowhere to live … totally platonic like living together and there is chaos going on in the world outside,” she said.

In 2021, Snook married Lawson, a great-grandson of the Australian poet and author Henry Lawson, in a private wedding in Brooklyn.

Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin in HBO’s Succession. Photo: AAP

Their first child is due “mid-May”, just as the final three, highly anticipated episodes of the final season of Succession land (the last episode goes to air on May 28).

“We found out during the read-through of episode 10 that it was going to be the last season,” when asked about her Emmy-winning, seven-year career on Succession, which began in 2016.

“It was a pretty bold decision to go out on a high. I don’t know of any other show that has done that.

“It’s been an incredible ride and strange that it’s only four seasons.”

Elsewhere, Snook opened up about saying goodbye to her character Shiv Roy in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in March.

“I was very upset,” she said.

“I felt a huge sense of loss, disappointment and sadness. It would have been nice to know at the beginning of the season, but I also understand not being told until the end because there was still a potential that maybe this wasn’t going to be the end.

“Emotionally, all of us weren’t necessarily ready to be done with the show because we love each other so much.

“But everything has to come to an end, and it’s smart not to let something become a parody of itself.”

Modern-day ghost story

Enter her next project, a story about memory, guilt and family secrets, and no, it’s not a Succession spin-off.

Run Rabbit Run (Netflix, June 28) made its midnight world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and while the storyline received mixed reviews, it was Snook who largely captivated audiences and critics alike.

Set in Melbourne, and leaving behind her Shiv Roy high-end suits, Snook plays a divorced woman Sarah, whose daughter Mia (newcomer Lily LaTorre) begins acting strangely on the eve of her seventh birthday.

In the teaser trailer released this week, amid scenes of a gloomy house and unexplained high winds, young Mia starts wandering around wearing a creepy rabbit mask and doing unnerving crayon drawings.

A rabbit appears and Mia then claims to be Sarah’s sister Alice, who went missing when she was seven.

Daina Reid tells VicScreen the team “protected” newcomer Lily LaTorre a lot: “There were certain bits of the script we didn’t show her.” Photo: Netflix

By all accounts, what unfolds is the relationship between mother and daughter (and past unresolved trauma), and slowly, Sarah’s life becomes a living nightmare as her relationship with Mia starts to deteriorate.

“Mia stops referring to Sarah as her mother, treating her like a stranger.

“Things come to a boil when Sarah takes Mia to her childhood home, hoping it will provide clarity for the situation,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote in a January review after Sundance.

“Soon it becomes clear that conflict between mother and daughter goes deeper than either one realises.

“Moody and atmospheric, Run Rabbit Run easily builds tension and dread. And yet, it keeps hinting at depth that never comes.”

Snook and LaTorre in a kitchen scene: Reid says “tackling themes of motherhood guilt weren’t easy, but carried a sense of importance”. Photo: Netflix

Snook “turns in a terrific performance which is always true to the character at every point of a complex arc”, writes Screendaily, adding that Succession fans “won’t be used to this range”.

“But, they’ll be impressed by it, and recognise a few underhanded moves.

“So closely is the actor bound to the story that it’s impossible to separate the lines between the creative team (including award-winning Burial Rites author Hannah Kent) and the actors.

“Rather, Run Rabbit Run is teamwork to its core, a sisterhood offscreen that’s not quite mirrored on.”

The film joins Netflix’s growing slate of Australian-made stories including Emmy Award-winning documentary Puff: Wonders of the Reef, hit series Heartbreak High and Wellmania, and crime-drama film The Stranger.

Run Rabbit Run has two screenings at the Sydney Film Festival on June 10 and 15, and premieres on Netflix on June 28