Brittany Snow is all too familiar with the feeling of being unappreciated. Since he appeared as a wide-eyed teenager on the CBS daytime soap opera Guidance light and NBC period family drama American dreams For more than two decades, Snow has made her career playing women whose beauty belies the storm of emotions brewing beneath the surface.
“I think there’s a stigma surrounding people who come across as vulnerable, empathetic, enthusiastic, and curious,” Snow says. “This is sometimes described as not having very high intelligence. I like to be underestimated because I want to prove people wrong. I think that’s why people see that in my characters. I carry that with me when I do anything.”
Trading in her girl-next-door persona, Snow has delivered three very different shows over the past year, each featuring an intelligent woman fighting for her survival. Last summer, she returned to the cultural zeitgeist playing a liberal character who falls in with a group of East Texas housewives in Netflix’s sex satire series. Hunting wives. Then she starred in the thriller Taut The monster inside meshe plays a humble art gallery owner who orchestrates the downfall of her murderous husband. Finally, in Hulu Murdoch: Death in the familyShe plays the real-life reporter who helped open the case against wealthy former South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh.
Snow is the eyes of the public in the world Hunting wivesstarring a married mother named Sophie O’Neill who embarks on a passionate love affair with glamorous socialite Margo Banks (Malin Akerman). Having spent most of her adult life trapped in a gilded cage, Sophie finds her desires awakened by Margo, the wife of a gubernatorial candidate whose dissolute private life conflicts with her conservative public persona.
“When she meets Margo, Sophie taps into a part of her”—namely her femininity and her sexuality—“where she closes herself off. A lot of times, she’s trying so hard to resist something that seems to be part of her DNA,” Snow explains of her emotionally “stunted” personality, to which Margo has become irresistible: “In season two, you see that this is a girl who is actually aware of danger and playing with it.” “Fire,” Snow teases.
It’s true that next season will increase the amount of political commentary and sexual content with some good old fashioned camp. “There’s a lot of sex, however [involving] “There are so many people and so many storylines,” Snow says with a laugh.
Unlike her on-screen counterparts, Snow takes a highly analytical approach to her craft, while Akerman relies more on instinct. The two leaned on each other — and on the female-dominated cast and crew — while filming the more intimate scenes. “Kissing women is my favorite pastime now,” Ackerman joked while praising Snow. “She’s always considerate of our feelings, and we’re very open about how we feel between each take so we can adjust if anything feels uncomfortable.”
With Sophie, Snow particularly enjoyed abandoning her “good girl” persona to play an increasingly “troubled” woman teetering on the brink of complete personal ruin. “Sophie is one of those people who makes that choice when she wants something — and she really wants this new life. There’s a lot of overlap with her and Margo in Season 2 where you wonder who’s more manipulative, and Sophie does it in a very different way than Margo does,” Snow offers. Even after Sophie seemingly kills Margot’s estranged brother out of despair at the end of Season 1, “there becomes this toxic partnership in which they realize they need each other more than they ever thought,” she adds.
“Toxic” also perfectly describes the relationship between Snow’s character, Nina, and her real estate mogul husband, Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), in “Toxic.” the A monster inside me. Nina is presented as the seemingly empty-handed wife of Nile, a man who secretly murdered his first wife – and Nina’s former boss – Madison (Layla George) in a fit of passion.
While Nina might play house with Nile and dress in quiet luxury, Snow wanted to reveal small chinks in her armor to show that she didn’t come from wealth. Over the course of eight episodes, viewers learn that “she is a survivor, and that she is operating on a primal instinct to survive and get what she wants,” says Snow. Instead of a marriage built on true love, Nina and Nile’s relationship is more like a sparring relationship between partners. “When they fight, she wants them to see her as an equal, and she knows he responds well to anyone who stands up to him,” Snow adds. “She takes that into the bedroom, too, because she’s trying to assert a kind of power that she knows is a struggle to maintain.”
confirms Claire Danes, who serves as executive producer and plays the author who takes a passive interest in Neal THR The creative team had always planned for Nina to be involved in dethroning her husband, but noted: “Once we saw how great Brittany was, [Nina] She’s more developed as a character than she otherwise would have been.
In the end, “Nina got exactly what she wanted, as far as the family she always wanted to have and getting out of that little apartment with the string lights,” Snow says of her character, who was last seen carrying her and Nile’s baby. “She’s one of those people who doesn’t necessarily know how to love someone without an agenda. So when Niall dies [in prison]Maybe she will connect with the next person and fall in love with the next thing that can help her. I don’t judge my characters, but they’re messed up enough to think this is the next option for them.
The least morally ambiguous of Snow’s recent characters is Mandy Matney, the investigative journalist whose podcast served as the source material Mardo. From the beginning, Snow tells the real Matney that she is “not interested in imitating her.” Instead, the actress studied her counterpart’s voice and mannerisms, “and then tried to come up with something that closely resembled her essence.”
while Mardo “It’s not ultimately about Matney,” Snow says. “I wanted to make sure she was really the light in a really dark story.” These dark things can happen that we can’t control, but there are people who search for the truth in this pure way.” “Mandy is an example of the desire for the truth to come out, and for women to get justice.”
Like her characters, Snow has always been more than meets the eye. But after taking a self-imposed hiatus to address her mental health in her 20s, the actress admits that at 40, she no longer believes being hard on herself is the key to moving forward, noting that she has finally learned to let go of that negativity and just enjoy her work. This kind of candor has not gone unnoticed by collaborators like Dane, who notes that there is often a kinship between actors who start working in the field at a young age.
“She’s very open and she’s very bravely shared the ways she’s been struggling in life, but she’s thoughtful and self-reflective in a beautiful way — not in a narcissistic, introverted way at all,” Danis says of Snow. “She’s creatively and emotionally ambitious in a way that I really respect and admire. She’s about as far from complacent as one can get.”
This story first appeared in the June standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To obtain the magazine, click here to subscribe.
