Sarah Snook took home the trophy for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series at the 2023 Emmy Awards for her role as Shiv Roy on Succession.
“Thanks for everyone who voted and for loving the show as much as we did,” Snook said on Monday, January 15, during her Emmys acceptance speech at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. “As a cast making it and as a crew making it, we put our all into it. The bar was set so high and I think that’s what spurred us on.”
Snook gave a shout-out to the show’s producers as well as “all my cast who I just love so much and I’m gonna miss.” Then she turned her attention to her family. “To my mum and my dad, I love you and thank you for having a dress up box when I was a kid,” she said. “I think this is where it gets you!”
Finally, she thanked her daughter, who she welcomed with husband Dave Lawson in May 2023. “The biggest thank you, I think though, is to someone who won’t understand anything that I’m saying at the moment, but I carried her with me in this last season,” Snook said. “Really, it was her who carried me. It’s very easy to act when you’re pregnant because you’ve got hormones raging. It was more that the proximity of her life growing inside me gave me the strength do this and this performance. I love you so much and it’s all for you from here on out. Thank you.”
Six actresses were nominated in this category: Sharon Hogan for Bad Sisters, Melanie Lynskey for Yellowjackets, Elisabeth Moss for The Handmaid’s Tale, Bella Ramsey for The Last of Us, Keri Russell for The Diplomat andSnook for Succession.
Snook, who has been nominated twice before, recently won the Golden Globe on Sunday, January 7, for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
“I was kind of hoping I didn’t have to get up! Kieran [Culkin] is usually better at the speeches. Do you want to get up instead?” she joked to her fellow costar before taking the stage to accept her Golden Globe. “This show has changed my life, and everybody in it was amazing. The cast, the crew were fantastic. This was a team effort. It was always a team and that’s what made the show amazing, I think, to be part of.”
Moss — who produces and stars as the lead role of Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale — previously took home the Emmys for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series and Best Drama Series in 2017. (She was also nominated in 2018, 2020 and 2021 for The Handmaid’s Tale along with six prior nominations for Mad Men in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 and one nomination for Top of the Lake in 2013.)
The Diplomat star, Russell, was up for her fourth Emmy nomination after being nominated in 2016, 2017 and 2018 for her role in The Americans.
Lynskey was also previously nominated in this category for her role of Shauna in Yellowjackets in 2022, however, was beat out by Zendaya for Euphoria. Aside from Yellowjackets, Lynskey was also nominated this year for Best Guest Actress in A Drama Series for The Last of Us, which she lost to costar Storm Reid.
Lynskey was not the only actress this year to receive multiple nominations. Hogan, who stars as Eva Garvey in the hit show Bad Sisters, received a second nomination this year for Best Writing For a Drama Series. (She has previously been nominated for Best Writing For a Comedy Series in 2016 for Catastrophe.)
This is Ramsey’s first ever Emmy nomination for her role as Ellie in The Last of Us. The HBO series received 24 total Emmy nominations.
