Months after his masterpiece finale, Jesse Armstrong ponders the real tragedy of his shows ending.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Its been a complicated year for the creator, executive producer, and head writer ofSuccession.
Armstrong had been unable to talk about working on the series whenSuccessionended before the writers strike was resolved.
Did you always know where you were going to end up?I didnt know where we would end!
But I did know, even from writing the pilot, what the tone of the ending would be.
But I knew there wouldnt be a clean victory and it wouldnt be a celebratory coronation,Star Warsstyle.
Gerri hanging a medal on Shiv!Yeah, with Greg as Chewbacca roaring in pleasure!
But its not like that.
It doesnt mean hed be good at it.
Could we make that happen?
It would be interesting to see if it could happen.
The writers room was a testing arena for the truth.
Kendall taking over couldnt happen because it just doesnt feel true enough.
But wed have been forcing it.
And if were forcing it, why are we forcing it?
That is a long-winded way of saying I dont think he ever would take over.
Thats just not how the show was constructed.
Hes the titular emperor.
He can put it on his resume.
The progression of his character is so unexpected.
Id always admired him.
I was like,Id love to write something where he gets to do that.
I get stray lines of his dialogue in my head sometimes.
On the way over here I remembered his delivery of, You dont hear very much about syphilis anymore.
The MySpace of STDs!Matthew is like some incredibly precise machine.
Can you calibrate it 3 percent in this direction?
He has that level of control.
How does the extraordinarily painful relationship between Tom and Shiv inform the arcs of those characters over time?
Robert Maxwells family has lots of complicated relationships.
This was more a creation of the show.
I guess its the princess and the lowborn outsider; thats a story shape we know from other places.
How does it affect their trajectory?
The more sophisticated Roys misapprehend Tom, right?
I like the relationship, but my friend said they dont believe it.
It made sense to me.
Its a very particular kind of guy.
But Tom also has a sort of old-fashioned machoness that quite fits the world.
Shiv has grown up in a pretty aggressively male atmosphere, and she likes having Tom by her side.
The bit we brought to it as we developed the series is how wrong Shiv got him.
This persons ambition is burning bright.
Hell be pushed around a lot, but that doesnt mean he doesnt have his own interests.
When I watched key episodes and moments again, they landed differently.
The first time, that exchange was horribly funny to me in a tossed-off,Veepsort of way.
But Kieran Culkins expressions made it impossible to laugh this time.
Sarah was unbelievably brilliant in it because everything Shiv says that is self-serving is also actually true, right?
The fact that Shiv is telling the truth about that is what lets her sleep at night.
Im not sure shed be able to do the version of that scene that is entirely duplicitous.
Shiv is so excluded and put-upon by the men in her family.
When Logan dies, I was struck by how Kendall and Roman take her for granted.
But they certainly do think of her as,Oh, something difficult and emotional needs to happen.
Wheres Shiv to go and do it?
and they proceed to have a very honest, tough conversation.
One of the tragedies of the family is how contingent and strategized all the relationships have become.
They naturally PR themselves.
And because its so rare onSuccession, I really loved writing these moments.
Im interested in what you say about the show feeling darker or sadder the second time.
But then when I watch it again, its easier to enjoy the jokes.
But maybe with this last season, and knowing where its headed, the dark flavor comes through more?
It felt brilliant on the day, watching it.
Lucy Prebble in the end said to me, Theyre all the same.
We were coming to the end of the show, and I think I was scared to let go.
I never saw that between Logan and the other children.
But that video was a rare opportunity for us to present a scene where something incendiarydidnthappen.
Maybe its because Connor is rather, in a touching way, resigned.
Which is sad, but maybe makes dinner easier!
Thats the headline answer.
But then you get into a much more complicated set of questions.
I dont think Logan would say Whatever love means.
The spotlight, the cultural heat, the political heat, the financial heat, goes to the successor.
People dont like it.
They thought there was something innate about them which made them powerful, desirable, fascinating.
As soon as Logan anoints his children in different ways, they become incredibly unsatisfactory and viscerally upsetting.
The underlining versus the strike-through.Exactly, yeah!
That was quite extraordinary to think about later, having such a close working relationship with him.
Brian was comfortable with it, and those details made the backstory.
One of the things I noticed about a lot of powerful men is that they dont speak that much.
Power comes from people trying to constantly figure out what you are thinking or meaning.
It was always clear that Logan was going to have fewer words than other people.
And fortunately, theres no one whos so expressive in repose as Brian.
Its like pouring water onto a scroll and revealing a text thats hidden code.
Kieran loves saying unsayable things, or doing something that should never be done.
Hey, hey motherfuckers, whats up?
Thats his first line!
There cannot be anyone better in the world at doing that part.
Theres something genuinely haunted about Roman.
But if youre the second son, whats your relationship to power?
You become a bit of a joke.
Everything becomes a bit of a joke.
Then again, it has always been calledSuccession.
It was always going to be about what happened when the sun went out.
I think we made the right choice in terms of how long you want to have that world exist.
There was no version ofSuccessionthat was more funny or more tragic.
I pitched it somewhat tongue-in-cheek as FestenMeetsDallas.
I hadnt thought about the Dogme 95 film movement in relation toSuccession!
But now that you mention it, it seems obvious.
And if the tone is off, the thing just lies there, dead.
But talking about tone is difficult for me.
It has to justbethere.
