There's been a lot of well-deserved Emmy buzz around Sarah Snook's ground-breaking performance as Shiv Roy in the fourth and final season of "Succession," but one scene, in particular, stood out from the rest. As the only daughter of the Murdoch-like media titan Logan Roy, Shiv and her father have a special relationship — some may say that she's his favorite, or even that she shares more in common with him than any of her brothers — but they are estranged in season 4 when Logan unexpectedly passes away.

Shiv's devastating reaction to hearing the news of her father's death was so moving that it made the guys behind the camera tear up. Even though they knew it was coming, Snook's performance was so evocative that it made both the creator and the director cry. Executing such an unconventional and dramatic scene is a huge challenge for most actors, but it didn't take long for Snook to totally nail it. In fact, she managed to move director Mark Mylod to tears the minute they started shooting.

"When Sarah Snook took her phone call to speak to Brian [Cox]'s character, ah, I started tearing up at the point," Mylod confessed to Entertainment Weekly. "I knew the script backwards, but what Sarah did to it on that first take, which I think is the one we used in the cut, was just amazing to me."

Snook is living proof of how a performer can completely transform a piece of writing. Despite Mylod's familiarity with the script, the actress still managed to completely take him off guard and react as if he didn't know what was coming. Snook's performance was so moving, in fact, that Mylod wasn't the only major player on set that started crying.

The Actress Moved Jesse Armstrong To Tears On The Very First Take Too

It seems there wasn't a dry eye in the house when Sarah Snook shot her gut-wrenching scene following the show's biggest plot twist. Mark Mylod said series creator Jesse Armstrong was also incredibly touched by the actress' heartbreaking interpretation of his words. Despite having written the scene himself, he too was shocked to his core.

"I found [it] incredibly powerful," Mylod recalled in an interview with Vanity Fair. "Jesse and I, with this take, were stood next to each other at the monitor and I just had tears rolling down my face, and I could see out of my peripheral vision that he was the same. I was completely wiped out by her and just so in awe."

It is the way Snook plays Shiv's helpless desperation in this scene, "the seeking to control that which you can't control and that regression to childhood," as Mylod put it, that moves the viewer to tears. There is a rare vulnerability in Shiv that permeates through every part of her, from her wavering voice to her hunched back.

But it wasn't just those spectating the scene that were overwhelmed by Snook's emotion. Her scene partner Alan Ruck, who plays her elder step-brother, Connor Roy, also had a strong reaction to his co-star. In fact, he used the rawness of her performance to motivate his own.

"I was taught a long time ago that you just have to accept the fact that your performance is gonna come from all the other characters around you if you're just open to what is going on," Ruck explained in a look inside the episode. "And when Sarah came in to tell me, and Sarah was a puddle, you know, then it was just like game over. You don't have to act."

Sarah Snook Dove Deep Into Shiv's Emotional State

Shooting Logan's death wasn't just painful for the series creators — it was also extremely taxing for the actors, Sarah Snook included. "Being in that frame of mind for two weeks at a time is not healthy," the actress confessed. "I found it was better for me to pull out of it completely so that it could be fresh still because like for me staying in means that it dulls and it's not good."

Despite the toll that it took on her psyche, Snook still might have been better off than some of her more method co-stars — looking at you, Jeremy Strong. Mark Mylod found that Snook took an approach more adjacent to co-star Brian Cox, in the tradition of classical stage acting. Unlike Strong, she would not stay in character when the cameras stopped rolling. "She has this ability to flick a switch and to dive straight deep, deep into the character," he explained to Vanity Fair. "There's no kind of gradient in there. It's just 'bang' straight back in."

The actress completely transforms when she becomes her character, embodying their emotions completely in a way that the director could see permeating through her dialogue, her expressions, and even her gait. "[T]hat kind of detail that she's aware of and the way she uses her body to express the character even with her back to the camera — that to me should be a masterclass for anyone that wants to be an actor," Mylod said.

Snook managed to make the director, the series creator, and me all burst into tears with her back to the camera. If that isn't the mark of an Emmy-worthy performance, I don't know what is.

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The post Succession's Sarah Snook Moved The Directors To Tears In Logan's Death Scene appeared first on /Film.