The succession of Sarah

After five years playing the monstrously fabulous Shiv Roy in hit series Succession, Sarah Snook has cemented her place as TV's most-loved villain. In the wake of the final showdown, the Australian actor prepares for her next role - as new mum

- By Jessamy Calkin. Photographed by alexi Lubomirski

People love Shiv. "You lucky bitch," said my friend when I mentioned I was going to New York to interview Sarah Snook, who plays Shiv in the hit TV series Succession. What's so lovable about a character described (by one of her creators) as "a flawed, monstrous nightmare"? It's her strawberry-blonde hair, her razor-sharp retorts, her sidelong looks, her stealth-wealth wardrobe, her strangely expressive face and manipulative ways. She's "Shiv fucking Roy" and she embodies one of the delightfully unpredictable elements that run through the heart of Succession: the fact that, despite being a woman, she doesn't have a heart of gold.

"I actually think Shiv is an incredibly difficult part to play. In the wrong hands she could seem like a stone-cold bitch," says co-executive producer Georgia Pritchett, also one of the show's team of writers. "But Sarah's performance is so layered - she manages to bring such vulnerability to the part, it makes the character and her relationships much richer and more interesting."

And here is Sarah Snook, sitting in a low-key cafe eating banana bread, cheery and open, wearing a T-shirt and black trousers, her hair shoved into a baseball cap, her feet in a pair of ancient Blundstones which, she shows me, have a hole in them. They were the boots she wore to her wedding to comedian and fellow Australian Dave Lawson two years ago in her garden in Brooklyn, New York. Now the couple are expecting their first child together. More on that later. First, we need to discuss that notorious TV series she's in.