Bullseye with Jessie Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jessie Thorn.

Next up, the Australian actor Sarah Snook.

Oz are you know Sarah for her role on HBO's Succession, one of the most acclaimed TV dramas in the last decade?

Sarah plays Shivan Roy, but to her friends and family, it's just SHIFT.

SHIFT, like the sharp thing you would use to gut your enemy.

Succession is a show about, well it's about succession.

The Roy family owns a giant conservative media conglomerate called Wastar Royco.

The family's patriarch Logan Roy is aging and can't run the company forever,

so the question is who will take over and what are they willing to do to be that person?

SHIFT at first is happy to let her brothers fight it out.

Her husband Tom works for the company, but she mostly works in politics, managing campaigns for

progressive candidates. As long as she can keep her giant Manhattan apartment, she can manage

things on her own, just fine. Thank you very much.

But like pretty much every character on Succession, it doesn't take long for the cracks to show.

She worries that her influence in her family is the only thing that matters to her career.

She asks her husband for an open marriage literally on their wedding night.

Linda Holmes, the terrific host of NPR's pop culture happy hour, talked with Sarah about what

it's like to play one of the most fascinating, complex, and confounding characters on television

today. But before we get into that, let's take a listen to a clip from the show.

As I said earlier, SHIFT spends most of the first season, kind of above the fray,

distancing herself from the company. But then at the beginning of season two,

...