Brittany Snow Talks Netflix Shows And Career ‘Perspective And Balance’

Brittany Snow

Emma Beiles Howie

Brittany Snow might be snagging leading roles in some of the most talked-about television shows today, but she is far from a newcomer on the Hollywood scene – having spent more than half of her life already entertaining us in front of the camera.

Yes, the 39-year-old actress is currently turning heads as Sophie O’Neil in The Hunting Wives on Netflix and as Nina Jarvis in the newly released Netflix dramatic thriller, The Beast in Me – but Snow is also remembered by many for starring as in the American Dreams NBC series (2002-2005), as well as in the teen comedy John Tucker Must Die and the Pitch Perfect movies – just to name a few.

“I think this stage of my career gives me a lot of perspective and balance,” Snow told me during our new Zoom conversation while reflecting on her early career ambitions. “I am older now – and the negative word is desperation, but the desire and the passion that I had for acting, and it really propelled me – but sometimes in a way that was not helpful, where it was just all I could think about. I definitely didn’t put myself or my hobbies or things like that first. I really was just so obsessed with my career and wanting to be in roles. Now, I think there’s like a little bit of a relaxation in the fact that I can have all these other hobbies and enjoy all these other things, and it doesn’t make me any less of an actor. If anything, it fulfills my life more.”

Also starring in the new Murdaugh: Death in the Family series on Hulu, the Tampa- born actress went on to say that she feels like a more well-rounded person at this stage of her career, as she is noticing that her creative interests and priorities are evolving.

“I think as a kid actor, you grow up with a very single-minded mindset, where you get your validation and the feeling of worth from succeeding and booking jobs and all these things. I think the priorities shift when you get older and you realize that having a family and creating a home and your friends and building a life is just – if not more important. My priorities have definitely changed, where I feel like I understand myself a lot better.”

As much as Snow has become a familiar face in Hollywood over the years, her star really has continued to rise even further, through The Hunting Wives, a series about a group of socialite women in East Texas as drama, sexual desires and even murder ensue. With season two already announced at Netflix and Saturday Night Live recently poking at its “soapy” narrative, I wondered when Snow first realized that her Netflix series was really catching on with viewers.

“It was sort of a very slow burn into recognition of that,” Snow said. “There wasn’t one like singular thing, I guess. People kept sending me TikToks and they were like having these wild opinions and very animated about it. I was like – Wow, there’s a lot of people having really strong opinions in mostly a positive way. Then, it was the billboard for Netflix. When that went up, I said to myself – Wait, they’re not going to put a Netflix billboard up on Sunset Boulevard without it being a big hit.”

As for season two of The Hunting Wives, which is starting to film, will the series continue to lean into its camp, or will some more grit and seriousness come of this evolving story around Sophie?

“I think that’s the great thing about the show is that it can hold that duality where there is camp and it’s very heightened, but my character is pretty grounded in the fact that I have to be the audience in some way. I went into the show knowing that if I am heightened or if I’m over-the-top, then the audience kind of will lose their viewpoint or footing. I went into it almost being Dorothy from Wizard of Oz in a way and then slowly starting to seep into the camp as it goes along. I do hope that in season two, it leans into that more because there is a lot of subliminal political undertones and opinions, and also doing it in a fun way.”

Snow is no stranger to selecting projects that tell a timely, call-to-action story. In 2023, she starred in an Academy Award nominated short film titled Red, White and Blue – playing Rachel, a single parent in middle America living paycheck to paycheck, while an unexpected pregnancy threatens her already troubled circumstances as she seeks out an abortion.

“I think what Red, White and Blue was something that I really believed in, and if I was met with opinions or judgments, I was ready to take that on. Now, as a woman in my thirties, it was okay for that because I really stood behind the message. I’m glad that it got nominated for an Oscar because it was such a marking that so many other people responded to it in the same way and it needed to be seen.”

Circling back to 2025, between The Hunting Wives, The Beast in Me and Murdaugh, I was curious if Snow’s latest television projects are “filling her cup” in ways that she did not feel in years past.

“I think because I’ve been very lucky to play vastly different characters in these three shows – and yet, they’re all under the theme of murder mystery and true crime in a way. I do feel like I have gotten to play characters that are many different things at once, which as a woman, that’s not always the case, unfortunately. A lot of my characters, they are met with a lot of judgment or they are sort of undermined in a lot of ways. They are not seen as very smart, at first. Specifically with Nina in Beast in Me, I think you go into it thinking she’s one way and by the end of the show, she’s completely something different. Mandy’s character as well in Death in the Family – she’s not seen as someone who can do this job very well and then she’s the reason the case gets cracked wide open. I really do like playing characters that are sort of underestimated.”

Now able to reflect upon her many career moves over the past couple of decades, what thoughts come to mind most for Snow around her acting journey thus far?

Snow said, “I’m just really grateful that I’m still doing it. It’s been such a long ride. I’ve gone through a lot. There was a lot of years where I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to work again. I was let go from my agent of 20 years. She took me out and told me I was never going to make it and that I should quit. And so, I think when I look back at my career, I’m just so proud of myself that I didn’t [quit] and that I knew I could do more. And yet in the same breath, I want to say that I feel like I’m just getting started and these are the type of roles that I’ve always wanted to play. So, I’m really excited to see where it goes from here.”

While concluding my conversation with Snow, I left this well-established creative with my signature and original interview question, wondering what she would playfully say to her popular Hunting Wives character Sophie, if only she could.

“Go home to your child! Just the basics. We’re going to start there. There are so many other things. Don’t drink and drive, girl. Just don’t do it.”