All Her Fault

The entertaining Peacock series All Her Fault begins with a cute kid, an Emmy winner, and a mystery. Sarah Snook plays a mother who goes to pick up her young son from a playdate and learns there is no child to pick up. There are a lot of twists and turns—a lot of them—particularly as she gets to know another mom at the school, played by Dakota Fanning. While the agony of a missing child is bad enough, the show ultimately interrogates marriage, and the way women are forced to accommodate the behavior and misbehavior of men in their lives. To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. http://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Linda Holmes?

  The entertaining Peacock series All Her Fault begins with a cute kid, an Emmy winner, and a mystery. A mom, played by Succession's Sarah Snook, goes to pick up her young son from a playdate and is told that he's not there. In fact, the woman who answers the door has never heard of him. And while the agony of a missing child is bad enough, the show ultimately interrogates not only Marissa's marriage, but also the way multiple women in the story are forced to accommodate the behavior and misbehavior of men in their lives. I'm Linda Holmes, and we're talking about All Her Fault today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.

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• 2:13Speaker 02

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• 2:20Linda Holmes?

  Joining me today is Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi. Hey Roxana.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  Hey Linda.

• 2:27Linda Holmes?

  So good to see you. Okay, so All Her Fault is based on a novel by Andrea Mara. It tells the story of a wealth manager named Marissa, played by Sarah Snook, who lives a very cushy life with her husband Peter, played by Jake Lacy, and her adorable son Milo. One day, when she goes to pick up Milo from a playdate at the home of a family she knows only casually, the woman who answers the door has no idea who she is, and there is no child to pick up.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Marissa. I'm here to pick up my son Milo. I think you've got the wrong house. There's no Milo here.

• 3:04Linda Holmes?

  There are a lot of twists and turns, a lot of them, particularly as Marissa gets to know Jenny, another mom at Milo's school, played by Dakota Fanning. Jenny's status as friend or foe is initially hard to sort out, but the two women forge an uneasy bond. All eight episodes are streaming now. Roxana, I'm going to cut to the chase here. The headline of your review called this show a masterpiece. Tell me about that.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  It did. Well, I have to qualify that it called it a misandrist masterpiece.

• 3:33Linda Holmes?

  Yes, correct.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  So I really did, I really wanted to make sure that I was articulating the fact that this show does a very good job being like, certain men of a certain class and a certain level of prestige are absolutely the worst, right? And like, we sort of have this formula in these sort of domestic shows, right? Like, we trace pretty much all of them back to like, Big Little Lies, but at this point, there have been like dozens of these, right?

• 4:04Linda Holmes?

  There are a lot, yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  There are a lot, because they're pulling from a thriller, like, literature tradition, where there are a lot. But what I really liked about this is I really thought that Sarah Snook and Dakota Fanning were great together. Like, that was the biggest surprise of the show for me, that we were really getting this like, meaningful, growing friendship between these women who are thrown together in like, the unlikeliest, wildest of circumstances.

• 4:37Linda Holmes?

  Yes, yes.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  But they form this like, really tangible, human bond.

• 4:43Speaker 05

  Sitting here laughing. While my son is missing. Kind of [__] up mother of mine. Oh, she's human. You're human. Stop. Look at me.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  I loved that, truly. Like, I thought that it was a very well depicted friendship and that they felt like real people. And I really thought that the conversations between the two of them, and of course, you're getting flashbacks, because this type of show loves flashbacks. I agree. We can get to that. But I really, I really thought that, like, the frame of these two women together, bonding over this mystery, bonding over how terrible their husbands are, bonding over the very difficult experience of being like, a mother and wife alive in the 2020s. All that really worked for me.

• 5:31Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. You know, when I first, when I read the logline, and it was like, she goes to pick up her son, and people are there like, I've never heard of him. And I thought at the beginning, I was like, oh, did she like, step into a wormhole or something like that?

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 5:43Linda Holmes?

  When I discovered it was an abduction story, then it kind of came into focus for me that it was a big, little lies-y kind of thing, these rich, white moms. But what I liked about it was the women, particularly Marissa, ultimately, like, get to make some decisions that the women in these stories don't always get to make. Sometimes, they are sort of at the mercy of their husbands or other people do things, and then they react. And everything just kind of like, turns out, if I can put it that way.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:17Linda Holmes?

  And they're bold enough to say, this woman, as a result of all these things, makes some decisions about what she needs to do for self-preservation and the good of her kid, that maybe not a real show like this would allow her to do. So this show's been out for a while. If you haven't already seen it, we are about to spoil a bunch of these twisty things that happen. So, everybody ready? Okay. What I think is fascinating is that Marissa's husband turns out to be sort of more spectacularly bad, because the resolution of the child abduction is that he was abducted by his biological mother, who was in a car accident with Marissa and her husband. And while Marissa was unconscious,

• 7:02Linda Holmes?

  he switched the baby, because they had a little baby who had died in the accident.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  You stole, you stole her child.

• 7:10Speaker 06

  No, I did, I did what I thought was right for everyone.

• 7:14Speaker 05

  You stole a child, Peter, what the?

• 7:16Speaker 06

  I saved that baby. I saved that baby and I saved you the pain of losing a son. I saved all of us.

• 7:23Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 7:24Linda Holmes?

  Peter is sort of the more spectacularly wicked. But Jenny's husband, Jenny's husband is just the most trifling, just unhelpful, whiny.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  He is 2025's version of No Scrubs. Like, it is really bad.

• 7:42Linda Holmes?

  And there is this moment where Jenny, he's supposed to be off doing something very important that as a result of which she has to take care of everything at home and take care of their son and everything like that. You think she's gonna find him having an affair. That is the kind of cliched end to this. She finds him sitting in a parking lot, watching like stuff on YouTube on his phone, drinking like a big gulp and just like hanging out. And when he sort of makes the argument like, I just need a break. I need some time to myself.

• 8:12Speaker 06

  Sometimes I need a bit of space and time and a little self-care too. All right?

• 8:15Speaker 07

  Oh, God, I know. Boy, do I know.

• 8:18Speaker 06

  Right, so this doesn't have to be like a big deal.

• 8:20Speaker 07

  I know because I dream of it.

• 8:23Linda Holmes?

  On the one hand, sure. On the other hand, she doesn't get that. And he by lying has appropriated essentially all of the available energy in the family to himself for his own needs. And in some ways, his pedestrian evil was more like infuriating to me.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:46Linda Holmes?

  Than Peter, the genuine villain.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  I think that what I really enjoyed is exactly what you just laid out, which is that we get two very different versions of how you can screw up a relationship in that you're just like a normal amount of selfish, right? Like making up like a little lie to get some time to yourself that then spins into this big thing. It's super pathetic that he's just in his car like watching TikTok.

• 9:16Linda Holmes?

  I mean, who doesn't love doing that, right? Like.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 9:19Linda Holmes?

  No shade to that activity.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Sure. Time to yourself is like totally valid. Time to yourself by making up an entire after-school club that you are leading.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  God. There are some qualities that transcend class and that are like taught socially to men, which I think is also like very interesting. Dakota Fanning's character is like the one who is pulling all the weight and the primary breadwinner in their marriage, and yet he is able to do these things.

• 9:46Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Because like culturally and socially, it's okay for men to need time away from their families.

• 9:51Linda Holmes?

  Right, right.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  So yeah, like I almost agree with you that like his level of terribleness is like more insidious perhaps than Jake Lacy's.

• 10:02Linda Holmes?

  I think it feels more familiar. Like I think it feels more accessible. You're not going to get a ton of baby switch stories. Do you, do you know a lot of people who have been sort of hoodwinked into taking all of the responsibility for everything?

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 10:17Linda Holmes?

  But when they do deal with Jake Lacy, I like the fact that yes, he has this spectacular evil deed, right? And that sets off, you know, other evil deeds. But you also find out over the course of the show, they uncover all these other things that he has done and you start to see how he is undermining and sabotaging for his own ego when it comes to lying about the injury that caused his brother to use a wheelchair. When it comes to lying about that injury, that's again, pretty dramatic. But there's a lot of other stuff that's just like needling.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:55Linda Holmes?

  They don't make these bigger evil deeds happen in a vacuum. They happen in the context of him pretty much giving himself permission to decide everything.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  The first thing to say about that is that like Jake Lacy has just been sort of like doing this now, right? Like after the White Lotus, he's sort of like settled into this niche and he's very good at it, but at the same time, once you cast Jake Lacy, I'm like, I'm going to keep an eye on this guy because something is going to happen here.

• 11:23Linda Holmes?

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  That is going to be bad. But there are also these very subtle, sharply written exchanges where it's sort of like, this is the emotional labor of like a marriage and what we just assume that women do.

• 11:40Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  But like you as a man can also do that.

• 11:44Speaker 07

  Did you sense anything, Mr. Kaminsky? What? When you spoke to the Nannies reference. Did you sense anything unusual? Oh, I didn't talk to anyone. I mean, that's really more Jenny's department.

• 11:55Linda Holmes?

  I see. And I think the title, All Her Fault, turns out to be very, very much what the show is about, right?

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:02Linda Holmes?

  Because it is about, both in terms of Jenny's life and in terms of Marissa's life, and to a lesser extent, to Peter's sister's life and Milo's biological mom. It is about the way that guilt is used on all these women to kind of

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:18Linda Holmes?

  shrink their worlds and shrink their options and make them feel terrible and make them doubt themselves and cause them to become, in a way, compliant because they are so filled with self-doubt. But one of the ways in which this all plays out, and this is sort of getting into end, end, end game spoilers, but what happens at the very end is that after this is all revealed, Marissa realizes, if I tell the truth about what happened, because by this point, the biological mother has died.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:47Linda Holmes?

  If I tell the truth about what happened, they will take Milo away from me. If I don't tell the truth about what happened, I have to stay with Peter because he will never let me leave. So she decides death is her only option, his, not hers. And the way that she goes about that is by sabotaging his EpiPen for his allergy and essentially inducing an allergy attack.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:13Linda Holmes?

  And there's a moment when he is realizing that he's in big trouble. And he's trying to tell her that it can't be that the EpiPen isn't where it's supposed to be.

• 13:24Speaker 06

  You always have the emergency kit.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  That's true. I manage your allergy for you.

• 13:31Linda Holmes?

  I manage your allergy for you. And so the show allows him to essentially die at the hand of his own weaponized incompetence.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 13:42Linda Holmes?

  In that sense, really satisfying. Like, if he had just been willing to take care of his own stuff, he might have remained alive.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:53Linda Holmes?

  To continue to be a menacing jerk.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  It is excellent femme fatale positioning, right? Like, it is what we used to do in noir, where we would have a woman who very actively made a decision to, like, free herself from a certain kind of, like, influence or oppression. And I feel like we used to be really okay with that in stories. And then in this sort of, like, subgenre, which I have, like, called the mother thriller, like, we're not as okay with it. Like, we make it an accident, or something tragically happens, and then everyone's living with the downfall. So, no, like, we're not advocating.

• 14:31Linda Holmes?

  No.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  But we are saying, like, there is something very, like, plot-wise satisfying with how this plays out.

• 14:39Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Very satisfying to see Sarah Snook play this moment, because it's like a whole intentional plan. She specifically eats, like, soy-based food, because that's what he is allergic to do. And then she has this, like, very deliberate kiss that she gives him, because she's like, no, I'm back to being your obedient wife.

• 15:03Linda Holmes?

  Yep, kiss of death.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, kiss of death, exactly. And so I think that, like, it also gives Sarah Snook, who we know is such a capable actor between, like, Succession and Dorian Gray, it gives her, like, a real emotional range of things to play in the last few episodes, after it's very front-loaded with, like, her concern, her confusion, her anxiety. You get, like, a different motivation toward the end.

• 15:29Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  It gives the episodes a different feel.

• 15:33Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Which is not something you get all the time in streaming TV.

• 15:36Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  So it's also a relief in that way.

• 15:37Linda Holmes?

  I would also say a kind word about both of the actors who play Peter's brother and sister, Daniel Monks and Abby Elliott. I alluded a little bit to the story about the brother who uses a wheelchair, and there was a childhood accident. But it turns out they've been blaming the sister for the entire time. And of course, it was Peter because Peter's terrible. I think the sister, I think the Abby Elliott character, and I'm so interested in the fact that she's the sister on the bear and she's the sister in this, and they're really different. She occupies almost opposite spaces, right? The most nurturing person versus the most perceived as needy person. She's kind of cast in the family as this grew up.

• 16:17Speaker 06

  You had just gotten out of rehab.

• 16:18Linda Holmes?

  There it is.

• 16:19Speaker 06

  And it wouldn't be the first time you'd relapse, right, Leah?

• 16:22Linda Holmes?

  And I think the show really comes around to acknowledging how much of, how much of that can be manufactured, basically, by our understanding of history and by how people constantly comment and sort of say things that build the narrative of the family that they accept and that they want other people to accept. And after Peter dies, I so appreciated the way that they basically let her character sit in this ambivalence, almost. He was her brother. I don't think she would have killed him. But she's come by then to understand

• 17:04Linda Holmes?

  the really destructive effects that he's had on her life. Anticipating someone being punished, that makes us feel good. We get to focus on their pain instead of our own.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  She turns in a really strong performance, and I keep thinking about like certain facial expressions that she makes, like in that final episode, when she puts together what has happened, when she puts together what is now going to be of her life without Peter sort of over her shoulder manipulating things. I think that's really well done. I also think that we're talking a lot about like how absurd, satisfyingly absurd, some of this stuff is. But there is this like frame that I keep thinking about, which is when Dakota Fanning's character Jenny finds her husband, who is like in this parking lot, like screwing around on his phone or doing whatever. And the frame is just the two cars. Cars like directly like facing each other.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  And there's something also just about like, sometimes these shows can feel not super well directed. Whereas I think like a lot of different elements here, from the performances to like the twistiness of the narrative, to just how like clean and effectively directed it is. I think it's just, it feels different from what we've come to expect in this genre. And I appreciated all of those differences.

• 18:28Linda Holmes?

  I do think that good direction brings a little bit more visual interest in exactly the way that you're saying. I think there are a number of shots that show one person in foreground, another person in the background. Obviously something that's frequently done, but I think, I think they have a very nice sense of it. Now, I do feel like I cannot stop talking about this show without mentioning my one beef. My one pretty significant beef with this show. Your colleague and our friend Catherine Van Arndt, as we record this, recently had a piece published in Vulture about the penultimate episode flashback where right before you're about to get to the big moments and wrap up your story,

• 19:12Linda Holmes?

  they say, well, let's jump all the way back and talk about how this all happened in the first place. And it's like, it's such a buzzkill. It's such a bad decision. And let's just tell things in order. That's my proposal.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't disagree. It feels exacerbated in the time of streaming where you're really trying to like capture someone to binge your show. All her fault was a binge, right? So they wanted us to watch all eight of them or whatever in a consolidated timeframe. So yeah, we're absolutely getting these like dead body to start the show and then flashback or like penultimate episode flashback. And structurally, it's just like, you can not do this or you can just like move the flashback around. Like it doesn't need to be the penultimate. Like if you really feel like this is something that you have to tell us, seed it in like the third episode. I don't know, the fifth episode.

• 20:11Linda Holmes?

  So that it doesn't interrupt the momentum in the same way as it does if you put it right before the conclusion. And I will say, in this show, they reveal a lot of information that is from the past, and they do a lot of it without flashbacks, right? There's flashbacks to some of it, but some of it just comes out in fights that people are having. You can do that. That's part of writing, to have information come to light. On balance, though, I think this is a really good show. And I think it's a better show than I, when I first watched it and I was like, oh, this is Big Little Lies, this is blah, blah, blah. The more I thought about it, and as soon as I saw your headline about the Miss Andrus masterpiece, I was like, that is true.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:50Linda Holmes?

  For all that I felt that it was a little bit familiar, it is really incisive when it comes to these terrible husbands.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  I think it is really thoughtful, within sort of like familiar themes, and finding different ways to explore some things that we say like flippantly, right? Like husbands, like take advantage of their wives or whatever, like these sort of like cultural sort of like truisms that we make jokes about. I think the show found a new way to explore that and to like read it for filth, right? And it was just very entertaining. I want to be entertained, man. That's the point of television. So yeah, I also was pleasantly surprised, I would say.

• 21:35Linda Holmes?

  I absolutely was, and I love Sarah Snook. So, good acting and terrible husbands. All right. Well, we want to know what you think about All Her Fault. Find us at facebook.com/pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Roxana Hadadi, it is always a pleasure. Thank you for being here.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 21:52Linda Holmes?

  And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio, and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour, or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Kayla Lattimore, and Mike Cassiff, and it was edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we will see you all next time.

• 22:27Speaker 00

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