Video: How Sarah Snook Stars in Broadway's The Picture of Dorian Gray With No Understudy

It isn't easy doing a solo show eight times a week, but it is especially difficult when you don't have an understudy waiting in the wings for emergencies.

Sarah Snook, the 2025 Tony-nominated star of the hit Broadway production of Kip Williams' The Picture of Dorian Gray, is currently grappling with that specific predicament. Williams' adaptation involves elements that render it functionally impossible to play the show as intended without Snook, which means a performance is cancelled if she cannot perform for any reason. On a May 15 appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Snook recalled a recent bout of illness that nearly kept the show from going on.

"I would never have known watching the show, but then I saw you afterwards, and you did look like you were like a boxer who'd been through a 20-round fight," Meyers shared sympathetically as Snook nodded.

"I was on the floor of my bedroom at 4 PM that day and was like, 'Do I do the show? I don't know'," Snook recalls. "I've got an I.V. bag. Can I do this, or that? But I did it, with sort of the caveat that I knew, in my head, I could stop the show if I needed to. But there's something��" (Snook squints her eyes, taking on the posture of a determined athlete) "—you know, is it pride or is it just sort of commitment? You're just like, 'Just a little bit longer. Just a little bit longer.'"

Thankfully, Snook is now back in full health, with her record of no missed performances on Broadway intact. To learn more about Snook's preparation regime to embark on the marathon run, her daughter's reaction to being breastfed while Snook was in costume as Lord Henry, and what it was like reuniting with her Succession costar Kieran Culkin this Broadway season, watch the video above.

The Picture of Dorian Gray continues its run at the Music Box Theatre.