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Sarah Snook was not prepared to win at the 2026 Critics Choice Awards.
The actress, 38, was nominated for Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television for All Her Fault, alongside Jessica Biel for The Better Sister, Meghann Fahy for Sirens, Michelle Williams for Dying for Sex, Robin Wright for The Girlfriend and Renée Zellweger for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.
As she took to the stage to accept the award on Sunday, Jan. 4, she revealed she did not spend time prepping ahead of time.
“My husband was like, ‘You seem a bit distant,’ in the car on the way here, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I just had forgotten what we were doing, and I didn’t write a speech or anything, and I’m just trying to go through some things now,'” Snook admitted. “And then I forgot when we got here again, ’cause it was so nice to see everybody, and now I’ve gotten up here, and I’m regretting all of it.”
The Succession star began to panic as she realized she only had six seconds left in her speech and tried to remember who to thank.
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“We had an awesome time with the crew, shooting really great stuff, and I think that’s the main thing, is just having a great time while we’re shooting, cause we’re just playing pretend,” Snook said as she concluded her speech.
“Thanks very much. This is really great. Thank you! Bye!”
In Peacock’s All Her Fault, Snook plays Marissa Irvine, an affluent mom who arrives to collect her 5-year-old son, Milo (Duke McCloud), from a playdate only to find that he was never there.
As the family’s frantic search begins, the media is quick to point the finger at Marissa and her friend, Jenny Kaminski (Elle Fanning), whose nanny, Carrie Finch (Sophia Lillis), becomes the prime suspect. What starts as a desperate hunt for a missing child unravels into a complex portrait of motherhood, privilege, blame and how far one will go to protect their family.
The other nominees Snook was up against — Biel, Fahy, Williams, Wright and Zellwegger — starred in a diverse array of shows this year.
Biel was nominated for The Better Sister, which she starred in alongside Elizabeth Banks. The pair played sisters with a twisted past who were pitted against each other when their shared husband — Banks’ ex and Biel’s current partner — winds up murdered.
In Netflix’s Sirens, Fahy, 35, plays Devon DeWitt, a woman who grows concerned that her sister, Simone DeWitt (Milly Alcock), has been indoctrinated into a cult led by Julianne Moore’s Michaela Kell, a wealthy and controlling businesswoman.
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In FX’s Dying for Sex, Williams, 45, stars as Molly Kochan, a young woman who faces a terminal breast cancer diagnosis and decides to leave her husband of 13 years and spend her remaining time exploring her sexual desires.
The television adaptation of Dying for Sex is based on the hit Wondery podcast by the same title, which was created by best friends Kochan and Nikki Boyer in the final months of Kochan’s life.
In Prime Video’s The Girlfriend, Wright, 59, plays Laura Sanderson, a gallery owner whose life begins to unravel when her son, Daniel (Laurie Davidson), brings home a new girlfriend, Cherry Laine (Olivia Cooke).
Zellweger, meanwhile, reprised her beloved role one last time in Peacock’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the final installment in the Bridget Jones franchise. It follows Bridget as she picks up the pieces of her life four years after the death of her husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), and also starred Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
See PEOPLE’s full coverage of the 31st annual Critics Choice Awards Sunday, Jan. 4 as they air live on E! and USA Network at 7 p.m. ET from the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif.
