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Spoilers follow forSuccessionseason four, episode eight, America Decides.
Talk to me a little about your own experience of election night in 2016.
Im wondering if that kind of call is typical in real-life politics.Yes.
That was all well-researched.
The fire being in Wisconsin in Milwaukee was not an accident, right?
You need one thats late-ish in the evening.Yeah, exactly.
The other two consultants, Ben Ginsberg and Justin Geldzahler, did a lot on this.
Ahoneymoon state![Laughs.]
And obviously sabotaging elections, you know, is unfortunately very much talked about these days.
Talking through those absolutely informed how the writers went about this show.
It draws a lot from both, really.Right.
They were out there by themselves.
Right.And so the writers entertained this question from the other way around, right?
At ATN, their call for Wisconsin ties their hands to do what they want to do.
Obviously, if the election doesnt feel legitimate, everything else is at risk.
I was gonna ask you very specifically about that Arizona moment.
And we know that the professional who ran the decision desk of Fox News wasfiredfor making that call.
Id have to go back and check, because its been years of drip-drip-drip about Fox on election night.
Definitely the arc of this episode was in place long before the most recent revelations.
But, my goodness, does it all track.
I know there is always conversation between people on the campaigns and reporters and editors, even editors-in-chief.
But at the corporate level, in my experience, that doesnt take place much.
In general, youre right that theres a firewall between the business side and the editorial side.
That makes it so much filthier to watch!Right.
You dont want, you know, an independent news enterprise to be compromised for commercial considerations.
And a thing about this episode is that we see what happens when thats turned on its head.
What is also true is that we spent a lot of time on each candidates speech for election night.
Even though its not front-and-center, you cant take your eyes off Mencken.Im glad.
Jeryd Menckens speech is spooky, and not exactly what you expect.
He has that line that hes been judged the winner by an authority of known integrity.Yes!
Pulling back the curtain on that sequencing, I think, was a good window into how this works.
It is scenarios that have not happened, in this setting where it feels like its totally plausible.
