Succession Showrunner on Season 3 Betrayal, Kendall’s Confession, Season 4 – The Hollywood Reporter

succession is one of the biggest shows of the season, leading the Emmy nominations by a whopping 25 nods. The HBO juggernaut’s success stems from the mind of creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong, who artfully blends intoxicating Shakespearean dramas with irreverent profanity to create a series that is all at once devious, hilarious, and devastating.

Armstrong’s career is enigmatic in its scope: he was a writer of the popular British comedy peep showOscar-nominated for co-writing the 2009 film In the loopand a three-time Emmy winner for succession – twice for writing the series and for the win in 2020 for outstanding drama series. The final winks come from a heartbreaking season three finale in which (spoiler) Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) betrayed Siobhan Roy (Sarah Snook) in a shocking final showdown, as well as Kendall (Jeremy Strong) confessing to his siblings, finally, of the manslaughter he was involved in at the end of season one.

THR sat down with Armstrong to talk about capturing those final pivotal scenes, how production is currently going on season four, and the best writing advice he’s ever been given.

What was your headroom going into season three – what parts of the finale did you know you wanted from the start? I understand you knew early on that you wanted Tom’s betrayal.

The writer’s room is long. We’ll probably talk about it for four months. The Tom idea I pitched very early, or it definitely came up early. Before we start breaking the episodes I like to do a month [long] chat of the entire season, what the ambitions would be for the season and where we would like to end up so that by the time we break through the episodes, the shape of the season has been decided. Even if things are juggling and you find something fascinating to do, or there’s a relationship or psychological development that you want to get into – as long as the end point is clear, hopefully all of those things can become satisfying. Sometimes you find ideas and plot forms and psychological things that [are] latently present in the idea of ​​where you are going. That’s kind of a vague way of saying I remember the Tom thing well, and the fact that Kendall has long kept a secret from everyone, and from his siblings. The idea that that could be the kind of ice-breaking fact that would allow the kids to reconcile was also pretty early.

The suspense of recent seasons is largely rooted in Kendall’s secret. Do you often think broader than just the season you are working on?

Yeah, I think you’re starting to get a tapestry of material that you draw on. I think that’s just the gain you get from a long running series is that moments sometimes crystallize over not one but multiple seasons. I think why it’s a satisfying moment [is] because it just feels true about someone you’ve seen over and over, struggling with something, over a long period of time. We’ve all seen moments in dramas when people make revelations: sometimes they’re satisfying, sometimes they’re not. We strive to be as true and honest as possible in our business stories and our psychological relationships, and we don’t try to force things because the beat, the moment, will be cool or interesting. You want to, but we really try to find the moments that are true. So it felt like this could be true, that Kendall was in such a degraded emotional state that he would have nothing left to lose, and that would be the spirit in which it would come to his siblings.

On the succession podcast, you talked about how the Kendall confession is such an emotional focal point for the entire season and the show, and how it was a struggle to get it right in the beginning.

I wrote the scene, and I thought it worked. But that’s an extremely coiled force that we want to bring. There was such a distance between him and his siblings that for it to ignite, that distance had to suddenly disappear and some of their historical, deep emotional relationship had to come to life. The most terrible cleavage can run in families. There’s just this huge residual resource of opportunity for reshuffling. That’s a big plus in a family story, that there are bonds that constantly bring people back together, even when their decisions and feelings push them apart. It tried to find what would ignite the warmth of sibling relationships. It’s a big cold that has grown up. And it was just hard. It was an acting performance of the three to find it.

Does it come down to the actors taking a certain note from the director and just sorting it out and playing it?

Marking [Mylod, the director] is there, clearly annotating, and so am I. There is a certain amount of debate. There were some directional cues that were helpful – it was important to physically realign them. Frankly, it felt like Mark and I didn’t always know how to get there in the end. But I feel like they got there and sometimes it was just a matter of doing it again. The playing makes the noise – often we play around a bit in the show, and there is a lot of fun to be had. We have a cool scene where there are tons of different ways to do it, and they can have fun. He didn’t. It was hot. It was dusty, it was cruel. And the emotional stuff was heavy. There was a lot more at stake, because if that moment didn’t work – without wanting to be too melodramatic, but as you pointed out, it’s kind of like the end of three seasons of our story: “Oh my God, all this could not crystallize.”

How much did you think about season four while on season three, or is it more like a bridge you cross when you get there?

More of a bridge to cross when we get there. To write peep show with Sam [Bain], at one point we got some good advice not to try and hoard your material as a writer. If it’s there, do it. If it feels [like] the right time, do it. And trust that if you have interesting characters, the next stage will be interesting too. You can get stuck with the idea of ​​saving material or fuel. And it’s quite a liberation to let go of that and say, “You know what, if this is the time, maybe there will never be such a good time to have this character conflict, or this debate, this argument, this psychological movement. …” I’m not fully aware of the possibilities evoked by what’s happening, and a little bit of my brain thinks, “that’s interesting to look forward to,” or “it’s not .” But it is above all a game of trust, rather than excellent planning. The seasons are very well planned. And I have general ideas about where the show is going. We didn’t start the room for season four with much of a road map.

Is there a lot of pressure to win the Emmy for Drama Series in Season Two?

Prices are so weird. We all want to know how people receive our stuff, so they are a signal of that. It’s fake to say you don’t know or don’t think about it. On the other hand, they feel secondary – voting is taking place, some politics, who has money to be promoted or not and what is promoted over what else. There’s something a little silly or dingy that makes you want to distance yourself from them is the honest truth, even though they’re beautiful too, great. It’s a nice night. Seeing another production you admire being rewarded feels good. And when you see something you admire that isn’t rewarded, it feels bad. I’d pretend I’m not interested in them at all. But in terms of pressure there is really no difference. I mean we would have been disappointed I think if we hadn’t been nominated for awards as we had been nominated before. But the ambition level for next season’s quality would be completely the same whether we received more, less or nothing. If you’re really doing it for prizes, then you’ve taken the turn. That’s not really the idea, is it?

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This story first appeared in a standalone August issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.