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Spoilers follow forSuccessionseason four, episode seven, Tailgate Party.
The Roys arent used to being challenged.
They were raised by wolves pirates who have politicians in their pockets and endless cash at their disposal.
Its not about, Ooh, I gotta make more money, Skarsgard says.
He just enjoys the chaos of it all.
He wants to go bananas.
For his part, Skarsgard is leaning into Matssons eccentricity and ambiguity.
Its what I came to set wearing that morning.
I wanted it to be a nice contrast to the Roys, who are always soimmaculately dressed.
I thought that was quite funny.
That got me creatively excited about leaning heavier in that direction.
When theRoys come to Scandinavia, we wanted it to be very Fjallraven, Scandy outdoorsy stuff.
Hes wearing sweatpants and sneakers, and the sweatpants might be $10 or $10,000.
You dont really know.
I wanted to give that a big fuck you and walk in wearing something completely different.
Everyone is taking the tailgate party really seriously.
Maybe thats also part of his success.
He enjoys the chaos of it all.
And if theyre not, itll be fine, because well come up with something else.
Theres something quite refreshing about someone conducting himself that way.
How did you and Sarah work together on that scene?Ive really enjoyed working with Sarah.
We dont really rehearse much.
Sometimes, if its a longer scene, well cold-read it in the makeup trailer in the morning.
Well go through it to find the banter and find the cues.
But the fluidity of it all, we will find on the day.
She might do it one way the first take and then go a completely different direction.
My responding to that hopefully creates something that feels interesting.
We tried to find that weird gray zone where there might be sexual tension, but its not explicit.
Jesse Armstrong and the other writers do that so well: Nothing is on the nose.
Its subtle and open to interpretation, and that is why I find the writing so extraordinary.
You also have scenes where Lukas and his right-hand man Oskar are speaking Swedish together.
Johannes understands Swedish and hes conversational, but hes not completely fluent.
With Johannes, we would come up with something he could say and then he would rehearse it.
We couldnt go completely wild with those improvisations.
Theres not many people who speak Swedish on the show.
He sounds great, but hes not completely fluent in the language.
Its such a complicated relationship.
Its disturbing, and theres a complexity to that relationship that was a lot of fun to explore.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
