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Sarah Snook didn't know 'Succession' was ending until the show's final table read.
The 35-year-old actress - who portrays Shiv Roy in the HBO series - felt a "huge sense of loss, disappointment and sadness" when she realised in January she would be saying goodbye to the programme, but can understand why she wasn't told the fourth season would be the last ahead of time.
She told the Los Angeles Times newspaper: “I was very upset. 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."
And while Sarah and her co-stars weren't "ready" for the programme to end, she thinks it is "smart" to call time on the drama now before it gets too unrealistic.
She said: “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.”
Despite her attachment to 'Succession' now, the Australian actress was hestiant about signing up in the first place because she didn't want to be marginalised in a show she initially thought was about "a bunch of whit men in business".
She recalled thinking: “Do I want to be a prop in this story that doesn’t focus on me at all?
“I read the pilot and went, ‘I want to watch this, but I don’t know if I want to be in it.’ ”
Showrunner Jesse Armstrong encourages his cast to improvise their dialogue and let scenes play out beyond what is written in their scripts, and Sarah thinks the approach has made her "less precious" about her work.
She said: “It’s made me less precious about my performance. I’m more willing to fail and be messy.
“Sometimes I’ll be like, ‘I don’t know how to say that,’ but it works for the character. Rather than competing with the verbal diarrhea of Roman, she’ll stand and watch and that will say enough.”