The Heart-Stopping True Story Behind All Her Fault

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Sarah Snook wasn’t kidding when she said All Her Fault “opens with a bang.”

It wasn’t a dramatic event like a gunshot or explosion, but the moment Marissa Irvine arrives at the house, expecting to find her 5-year-old son Milo at a playdate, you can feel her heart sink when he’s nowhere to be seen.

“That’s the incorrect address,” Snook explained to NPR’s All Things Considered. She also said the phone number given for the person organizing the playdate is now disconnected.”

The Peacock limited series, All Her Fault, starts with a shocking situation: successful financial advisor Marissa is suddenly facing accusations of wrongdoing. Among other things, she’s criticized simply for having a career and needing to hire a nanny to help with childcare. The series is based on Andrea Mara’s 2021 novel of the same name.

I’ve been following Mara’s work for a while now, and I was so fascinated by what she shared about filming! She described the emotional demands of playing Marissa as like competing in the “emotional Olympics” – really putting everything on the line. What struck me most was learning that the very beginning of the movie, All Her Fault, came from a genuinely scary moment she experienced with her own two-year-old daughter and her husband, Dave Lawson. It really adds a layer to the performance knowing it’s rooted in something so personal.

In April 2015, Mara went to collect her five-year-old daughter and was surprised to find no one answered the door, as she shared in a 2021 article for the Irish Independent about the inspiration for her book. She tried ringing again, and still no one came to the door – it felt strange, but not alarming at first.

Mara remembered starting to feel worried when she looked through a window and saw the house was completely empty – there wasn’t a single piece of furniture or any indication anyone lived there. She double-checked the address on her class list to make sure she was at the right place, which she was. This led her to wonder where the people who were supposed to be watching her daughter were, and she realized she hadn’t really thought about how well she knew them.

The writer, living in Dublin, wondered if a complex kidnapping plot had been unfolding. Had this other family deliberately placed their child—possibly not even their real daughter—in the same class as his daughter six months ago, as a slow, calculated move to eventually abduct her?

In the movie All Her Fault, Marissa arrives at an address sent to her by an unknown contact, only to be met by Esther (Linda Cropper). Esther is friendly, but it quickly becomes clear she isn’t Jenny Kaminski (Dakota Fanning)—the mother Marissa believed had invited Milo for a playdate with her son, Jacob. Esther calmly asks Marissa to come inside and help figure out what seems to be a simple mistake caused by autocorrect.

At first, Marissa was just embarrassed, but that quickly turned to worry. When she finally got in touch with Jenny, it became clear she had no idea where her son was. Jenny, also a busy working mother, understood how she felt, but was just as confused about the situation.

Okay, so I’ve been following this whole thing, and apparently, Marissa told the police she just assumed the number was Jenny’s mom! She didn’t even bother to check the school list, can you believe it?! She was desperate to not cancel this important meeting because her nanny was gone, so she just went with it, agreed to the playdate at a house she’d never even seen! It’s honestly wild, she was so worried about her schedule she didn’t even do the most basic check. I’m obsessed with this case, and it’s just… shocking!

She’d at least spoken to Jenny face-to-face at a school dance, much like Mara had met the other mother twice during school coffee gatherings.

In 2015, while standing outside the empty house and becoming increasingly worried, Mara was told by a neighbor that no one lived there – and that her daughter wasn’t inside as she’d believed.

Even though I logically knew a complicated kidnapping wasn’t actually happening, the part of me that’s a mom to young children was completely terrified, as Mara explained.

Mara’s worry quickly disappeared when the woman explained the family had simply moved a couple of blocks away and offered their new address.

Five minutes later, I was holding my daughter’s hand and chatting with her mother, playfully pretending I’d gone to the wrong house. I didn’t mention my momentary worry that her mother had taken my child – it just wasn’t something to bring up with someone I’d only met a couple of times at a coffee meetup.

Let me tell you, watching Marissa’s journey in All Her Fault is a real emotional ride. As a busy, married professional, she’s already juggling a lot, and when her son goes missing, everything spirals. It’s not just about finding him; she starts really dissecting her whole life, wondering ‘what if?’ Even something as small as replying to a text message without checking who it was from becomes a huge source of guilt and self-doubt, because she starts to consider how easily things could have gone terribly wrong. It’s a powerful look at how quickly life can change and how we all second-guess our choices when under pressure.

But while Mara’s mind birthed the majority of the thriller, the seed of the story rang true. 

Series creator Megan Gallagher explained to the Los Angeles Times that a major theme in her work is the guilt many mothers feel, combined with the unequal division of household chores in straight relationships. She noted this is a widespread issue, saying that nearly every woman she knows her age struggles with it – often to the point of crying after dropping their children off at school before heading to work.

She also shared that she enjoys highlighting how women can be truly passionate about their careers, and that it’s perfectly acceptable for them to love what they do.

Sarah Snook is both a successful actress and a new mother. Her pregnancy was incorporated into the plot of the show Succession, and she recently won a Tony Award in June for her leading role in the Broadway production of The Picture of Dorian Gray, proving she can balance a thriving career with motherhood.

To better understand Marissa’s experience, the Australian actress said she thought about how it would feel if the situation happened to her own daughter, as she explained to the LA Times. Becoming a parent has given her a deeper understanding of the situation.

Snook described the book All Her Fault by saying that the problems couldn’t possibly be caused by a single person – it just didn’t make sense that one person could be to blame.

Sometimes, real life is more bizarre than anything you could make up, and that’s certainly true when it comes to these long-standing unsolved mysteries:

I can’t even talk about it without getting chills. JonBenét Ramsey… she was just six years old, a little pageant princess, and she was murdered in her own home on Christmas Day, 1996. It’s been decades, and I still obsess over it. Everyone – her parents, her brother, even people around them – became a suspect, but after all this time, we still don’t know who did it. It’s just… heartbreaking and unsolved. I’ve read everything, watched every documentary, and I still feel like we’re no closer to the truth.

O.J. Simpson, who passed away in April 2024 after fighting cancer, was declared responsible for the 1994 murders in a civil court. However, he was found not guilty in the criminal trial. Legally, this means he was never convicted, and the person who committed the murders remains unidentified.

Some people believe Tupac is still alive, but the rapper known for songs like “Changes” was actually killed in 1996. The case remains unsolved.

Roughly a year and a half after Tupac’s death, Biggie Smalls was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting. The person responsible for his murder has never been identified.

Casey Anthony, the mother of Caylee, was famously tried for her daughter’s murder but was acquitted. Because of the verdict, the mystery of who killed Caylee remains unsolved.

Elizabeth Short, who was killed in 1947, quickly became famous due to the mystery surrounding her death. After her death, she was nicknamed “The Black Dahlia,” but her murderer has never been found.

In 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally murdered with an axe, but their daughter, Lizzie Borden, was put on trial and found not guilty. The case remains unsolved to this day.

In 1888, a serial killer began terrorizing London. Over a century later, the killer – known as Jack the Ripper – still hasn’t been identified.

In 1982, Chicago experienced a series of tragic deaths caused by poisoned pain medication. Seven people, including children, died after taking Tylenol capsules that someone had deliberately laced with cyanide. Several more deaths followed in copycat incidents, and the perpetrator of these crimes remains unidentified.

As a longtime follower of true crime, I’ve always been fascinated – and disturbed – by the Zodiac Killer. This individual terrorized Northern California in the late 60s and early 70s, and incredibly, we still don’t know who he was. What really set him apart was his brazen communication with the press – he actually named himself ‘Zodiac’ in letters sent to Bay Area newspapers. And to make things even more chilling, he included coded messages – four cryptograms, to be exact. While investigators have cracked one of those ciphers, the others remain unsolved, adding another layer of mystery to this decades-old case.

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2025-11-22 16:18