As much of the TV-watching world is, Ashley Zukerman is a Succession fan. Unlike almost everyone else, however, his affection was partly built from inside of the award-winning series. In a recurring role across the HBO masterpiece's four seasons, he played political strategist Nate Sofrelli, whose past romantic relationship with Shiv Roy — portrayed by fellow Australian Sarah Snook (Memoir of a Snail) — kept spilling over into their present professional and personal spheres. But "there was periods where I didn't know if I was coming back", Zukerman tells Concrete Playground, "and there were periods where I just became more fan than part of it". A role in one of the best TV shows of the 21st century, plus a range of others in fellow international fare — big-screen horror-western The Wind and drama Language Arts; television's A Teacher, The Lost Symbol and City on Fire; and the three straight-to-streaming Fear Street movies among them — kept Zukerman away from home for years. Then In Vitro, an Aussie sci-fi thriller that premiered at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival and hit local cinemas in general release on Thursday, March 27, 2025, came his way. Before this, he hadn't worked on a homegrown project since 2017's The Easybeats miniseries Friday on My Mind. Prior to that, he'd hopped between the Australian and Aussie-made likes of The Pacific, Rush, Terra Nova, Underbelly and The Code, and Manhattan, Fear the Walking Dead, Masters of Sex and Designated Survivor overseas. Starring in In Vitro eventuated because he initially met two of the film's co-writers and fellow actors, Will Howarth (who also co-directs with Tom McKeith) and Talia Zucker, in Los Angeles when they were all stateside endeavouring to establish their careers. Due to release timing, audiences who didn't catch In Vitro on its 2024 festival run will have seen Zukerman pop up in homegrown efforts in Aussie limited series Apple Cider Vinegar first, earlier in 2025. Later this year, he also has Australian-made, New Year's Eve-set time-travel film One More Shot heading to Stan. Only In Vitro has him playing a cattle breeder in an eerie vision of the potential near future, though — a livestock farmer experimenting with biotechnology in a world, and an industry, decimated by the climate crisis and struggling to adapt to the new reality. As Jack, husband to Zucker's (Motel Acacia) Layla, Howarth (Toolies) and McKeith's (Beast) movie also tasks Zukerman with exploring the distance that clearly lingers in the the feature's central marriage, digging into the source of Jack and Layla's domestic disharmony, and unpacking the impact of controlling relationships. More than two decades have now passed since Zukerman's initial screen role, also in an Australian film, with playing Thug #2 in Tom White his debut performance. Looking back on it, "so that was my first-ever thing, and I hadn't gone to the Victorian College of the Arts yet. I had no idea what I was doing", he advises. "My family, no one in my family, was in creative industries at all. I was just trying to brute-force my way through, trying to get headshots and making cold calls and just trying", Zukerman continues. "And then when that called and I got a role, I thought it was the craziest thing in the world. Then I get there and I do it, and I'm in a scene with Colin Friels [Interceptor] and Dan Spielman [Black Snow], who I ended up playing brothers with in The Code years later. And I thought that was just very, very special at the time. Dan was on, I think, The Secret Life of Us, and Colin Friels on Water Rats, and they were heroes of mine at the time. And then to be able to revisit that with Dan years later as, I guess, equals, was very special." [caption id="attachment_997134" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Succession, David Russell/HBO[/caption] From the outside, the success that Zukerman has enjoyed over the last few years with Succession, Fear Street, City on Fire, A Teacher, The Lost Symbol and more seems huge. It is huge. He's also added Apple TV+'s Silo to his resume. For him, however, "it hasn't felt huge, but I don't think I necessarily ever have that feeling of looking at things from the outside", he reflects. "From the inside, I'd say that it's felt really fun. I know that the thing I love most is when I love the project and I feel like I'm close to the coalface of something. I thought that they were all great projects, and so that has been fun." "You're right, it's been a really nice few years, and it felt comfortable," Zukerman goes on. "I guess I'll say I've just never really stressed work. I've always known things will come, and I've always been aware that if I'm not chosen for something that it's because the person, the artist in charge of it, just doesn't need my specific colour, my specific paintbrush, and so I've never really sweated it if things haven't come to me. But the last couple of years, it's just been really enjoyable to just work on special things — and to be able to have a continuous run of that, I do feel very full now. I'm not someone who enjoys acting all the time, I don't necessarily love the experience, but I do love it when I feel that there are certain elements there, and I've been on a run projects now where those elements were largely there. It has been a really fun few years for that." From what excited Zukerman about In Vitro, his read on his complicated character and the research that went into his performance, to farewelling Succession, returning home and his initial acting dream, our chat with Zukerman covers them all — and more — as well. On What Excited Zukerman About In Vitro, and About Making His First Australian Project Since Friday on My Mind "So I knew Tahlia and Will. I'd known them before. We all met in LA when we were all younger and hustling out there. It was just this coffee shop that we all ended up frequenting, and that's where we got to know each other. It was during the pandemic that they sent the script and said 'we've been working on this, we've been thinking about you for it'. And I read it and I thought 'wow'. And I was honoured that they thought of me for it. But I thought that they had done something just really special. I think that the horror genre or the thriller genre is interesting when it's used to explore other themes. And so the thriller part of it didn't necessarily pop for me, but I thought that they were able to thread together some nuanced questions about a few issues that we're dealing with in the world, and finding a connection between them — with the climate crisis; domestic violence; how we use tech to brute-force our way through solutions; and how some people in our world don't really care about our world or the natural world or each other as the actual life that exists in it, but just what they can take from it. And I think that they were able to thread all those ideas in a very nuanced way, offering something new to the questions of 'what do we do in this world?' and 'how are we going to deal with all of these issues we have?'. The climate crisis, like so many of us, that keeps me up at night. One of the things I worry most about it is this idea that it's happening just, just slow enough that we get used to it, and it's so hard to talk about. It's so difficult to engage with it, because it's so scary for so many of us. As soon as, I know for me personally, it's hard for me when I see an article written about it for me to click on it, for me to actually open that page and delve into it. It's hard for me to watch something about it. And I thought that what they did here was they did it in a very nuanced way, where they offered something very new to that conversation, and in a way that I thought was going to be very useful and interesting — and human. It was just that the film seemed to have a very new idea to approach this issue, and that's I think what moved me about it. And then, as we went on, there were questions about the character that became far more important for me to ask. But when I first read it, that's what touched me." On Zukerman's Read on Jack and His Motivations "I think it depends how far back we go with him. If we go from what we know backwards, I think he's gotten to a stage where he has lost his sense of humanity and he's just so far down the rabbit hole on this that he can't actually turn back. I was working on this show, The Lost Symbol, the Dan Brown thing, at the time that I read this, and I was researching these secret societies and how people who were doing bad things justified them. And I came across this quote, which was from the Bible: 'to the pure, all things are pure'. I think that that is key to Jack, that because he felt he was doing something worthy and important, everything else he was doing was fine and justified … It's this idea that he's probably just a bucket with a hole in it. It doesn't matter what you pour in, he's always going to be empty. I think he's one of these just incredibly ordinary people who thinks that he's a vulnerable genius, and no one is giving him the adulation he deserves, and he will never get enough love from his partner, and that then leads to control and violence. So I think those are the things that are at play in him." On Playing a Part That's a Puzzle for the Audience as They Try to Piece Together the Full Story "Typically, the more complex a character, the less challenging I find it, because then there are just so many things underneath the surface. So those things were great, and once I knew the approach, what we were trying to do, we talked, Will, Tom and Tahlia and I talked early about this idea that we'd be doing a disservice to this story if he was arch — especially the domestic control, domestic violence story. And that he had to be so ordinary in that way, that if we were trying to portray a villain, it would do a disservice to Tahlia's story and it would be doing a disservice to the wider story. So the fact that we could let all of that complexity live in him, that gave me a lot of freedom. But you're right that the challenging thing in any of these stories is how we bury the lead when we choose to drop breadcrumbs, how we lean on awkward moments as clues for the idea — like leaving just enough the information for the audience to question what is going on to lead them down the rabbit hole with us ,but gently. That is the more challenging thing, because that's not necessarily about just living in the scene naturally. That's trying to plan the larger story. I was buoyed when I saw it — I thought we did that quite well. I really loved especially how they put it together in the edit, leaning on those awkward interactions, I thought was quite nice." On the Research That Goes Into Playing a Part Like This, Digging Into Coercive Control, Biotech and More "Typically I do love a lot of research, and I started down the path of him being an engineer. I wanted to make sure those thoughts were in there. I wanted to know where we were at with that stuff. But I think ultimately where I got to was, all that stuff — like you like feel at the end of the film — I think is window dressing in a way. I needed to know enough about that so that I could know what he was doing, but ultimately the key to him is what we're talking about — how to actually think about these men who do these things, like 'what is the wiring going on in in them?'. That's the work of understanding this character. It's the domestic work. It's the human work. And to try to explain, empathise, not absolve, but just to understand what makes these people do those things. I think that was the work with him." [caption id="attachment_997132" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Succession, Macall Polay/HBO[/caption] On Saying Goodbye to Succession, and What It Meant to Zukerman to Be a Part of It "I think it's so nice that that show will exist forever. I think it's now part of television canon, and to be a part of it, I'm just so proud. So I think it will just always have a life. I grew up loving The Sopranos and Six Feet Under and The Wire and Oz, and those seminal TV shows — and The West Wing. I knew characters that were there for an episode, that were there for three episodes. I was so aware of every little storyline on all of those shows, and I was just like 'if only I could be in something like that, that would be it'. Like, 'I would be fine'. [caption id="attachment_997133" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Succession, Peter Kramer/HBO[/caption] And I'm lucky that I got to do one of those, and I got to be there for a little bit, and I got to witness how they made it, and I got to be around those people. I just feel so lucky. I was there and I was a part of it, but I got to also be an audience just as much as, I think, in it. It's an interesting question. It was something just so special about that production that I think I'll continue to try to, I guess, understand and learn from and think about. [caption id="attachment_997137" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Succession, David Russell/HBO[/caption] All I love about any work is how close to the creative muscle I can be, and I think what was special about that show was that. I was on the periphery. There were moments when I was a little more forward in the story, but largely I was orbiting the story. And I think what was special about that is that it doesn't matter how big your role must have been — that's both the cast and crew — everyone on that set felt like they were a part of it, that they had agency to make decisions, that they were genuinely like what was being asked of them was what was special about them to only bring that. That was what was special, and that's what I'll remember. And I think it left something with me that I've taken to other things. I think it's that energy that I've brought with me after that show. " [caption id="attachment_997145" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Apple Cider Vinegar, courtesy of Netflix © 2025[/caption] On Heading Back to Australia After a Significant Run of Roles Overseas "It was never by design that I would be away. It was just that the right things didn't come up, or scheduling got in the way, or something happened for me over there that meant that I couldn't come back for various things. And it was just always I missed it. I really missed being back. I really love it here. I love the way we work. I love how fast we are, how efficient we are. We work with few resources sometimes, but it's an advantage, it creates the style of TV and film that we make. It all goes into it. It ends up on camera, that energy. And it kind of has become our visual language sometimes. [caption id="attachment_997144" align="alignnone" width="1920"] One More Shot, Ben King/Stan[/caption] And I also guess there is something about being overseas and an expat which means I'm always playing someone else in a way. There's something about home, is what I'm saying, that's important. That I know the rules of Australia. I know how people interact, that there's the micro gestures between us all, how we all interact. I guess that is home for me, that when I get back to Australia my shoulders drop and I just know how to live here. Even though the US isn't that different, it's different enough that it changes me. It requires something else of me to live there. And that's a joy sometimes. I mean, to leave is wonderful — but to come back is really, it's home. It's just a very special thing. And also, I feel very fortunate because of what I've been able to do overseas, I can now come back and work on these great things, and help these great things get up." On the Initial Dream for Zukerman's Acting Career When He Was First Starting Out "It's such a great question, because it's so rare to look back and go 'what was it that that younger person had actually wanted, and are you there now?'. That's a very special question that I don't really often give myself time to do. But I think I probably had a lot of chutzpah and a lot of ambition back then. I probably had ideas, but I didn't know what the job was, even. I didn't know what the work of being an actor was. I had a feeling that acting gave me the ability to do something I couldn't do in life, that I loved the analysis of human beings, and I loved being able to express things that I didn't express in my normal life. I loved that. But that hadn't really congealed yet, and probably at the time I just had ideas about wanting to play these big roles and do these big things, but I didn't know what it was. [caption id="attachment_997146" align="alignnone" width="1920"] City on Fire, Apple TV+[/caption] Once I started studying and I started understanding what it was, I think very quickly the only goal of mine was to have choice — just to be able to do the things I love. Like I said, it's just not always the case that I love acting, and I knew that early on that sometimes the experience can be difficult for myriad reasons. But to be able to get to a point where I can just, from project to project — based on, whether it's the quality of the work or it's the quality of the people, or both — that I could just choose to do that. I think that's nice to think about that. I think I have it, I am doing that now. I get to be pretty picky with what I do, and I get to do things for the right reasons." In Vitro opened in Australian cinemas on Thursday, March 27, 2025.