Successions Jeremy Strong on Kendalls elusive moment of triumph and what it has cost him.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Spoilers follow forSuccessionseason four, episode six: Living+.
Its the rare installment that ends on a note of triumph for Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong).
Strong has been reluctant to discuss the nuts and bolts of his performance with journalists this season.
Whenever he does, he comes off like the embodiment of the stereotypical capital-A actor a cringe person.
People have been making fun of me about it for as long as I can remember,he toldGQ.
I had an old girlfriend who used to call me Kierkegaard.
Talking about this stuff is always slightly painful for me, Strong said at the start of the conversation.
Its hard to talk about my work without feeling a little bit ridiculous or self-important.
But I really loved this episode.
So lets talk about it.
I felt very concerned when I sawKendalls name on Logans notereanointing me as the incumbent.
I was waiting for the writers to give me what felt like my best shot.
In this one, the slingshot was pulled all the way back the moon shot, I should say.
I didnt think Kendall was gonna fail.
He really takes it too far, which is something the character has often done: overshooting the mark.
In this product launch, Kendall saw the opportunity to do something he thinks is visionary.
That was your contribution?Yeah!
It was a Chief Twit thing I wanted to embody.
And I had read about Shari Redstone doing a ViacomCBS product launch whereshe rode in one of theTransformerscars.
It was Bumblebee this yellow car.
The wayLorene was shooting it, the Chief Twit almost felt like a Leni Riefenstahl thing.
Lorene Scafaria, the episodes director.I love her.
Thebirthday-party episodeand the wake episode have been my favorite things to work on.
Episode three of this season was incredibly hard and deeply fulfilling.
I didnt feel that any of Kendalls ideas were wrong or unacceptable.
There just wasnt sufficient time to implement them.
In his mental health, Kendall has extreme highs and lows.
There is a manic quality sometimes.
Hes a pinball in a pinball machine.Yes.
I start the season telling my sister, Im done now.
At that point, its gonna beThe Hundred.
Maybe, all this time, Kendall just needed an interpreter.
Hes speaking his own language.
Nobody else on the show talks the way he does.Thats true.
And hes an enthusiast.
He gets excited about these things.
We shot a lot more than ended up in the episode.
One other thing we discussed was this translucent, polycarbonate sun that James Turrell was going to design.
There were going to be birdsongs.
We got into the details of what kind of brickwork there would be.
When Kendall finally gets a chance to deliver, he answers that call and often over-delivers or under-delivers.
But I felt that he met this particular moment.
Its very funny and very scary.
I think he feels like possession is nine-tenths of the law.
He wants to hold on to what he has.
He laid claim to his fathers image and to his ghost, in a way.
The episode opens with Kendall watching footage of his father.
Even if hes not consciously deciding what hell do with it, something is percolating in his mind.
The effect is strangely like Hamlet talking to his fathers ghost on the parapet except its a manufactured encounter.
And the old guard and his siblings.I think youre right.
To go to a very real emotional place.
Like Don Draper making people cry during the Carousel presentation.Exactly!
And monetizing his grief.
Isnt that what his dad would have wanted?Thats right!
Hes taking a play out of his fathers book.
What Kendall says to his brother in Norway is Dad would have done whatever the fuck he wanted.
So I feel heady and empowered.
Its not often that Kendall feels that sense of self-possession, largess, and grandiosity.
I felt itin Scotlandwith the L to the OG.
But in this one, I got to stay up there!
I was listening to this Kanye West track, Moon, for most of the episode.
Theres a refrain: I want to go to the moon.
Its a beautiful song.
This is the episode where he finally lives up to the crushing burden of that legacy.
There is a real sense of triumph the character experiences one that has eluded him to this point.
I dont think Ive ever felt triumphant in this series.
It has always been about not meeting the moment or missing the moment.
Is the real problem that Kendall was supposed to be an artist?
You dont see any of the other characters passionately and creatively engaging with art the way he does.
Or listening to songs and quoting lyrics.Interesting.
He does really listen to the lyrics of songs.
What would it be like to be in that family if that wasnt your native language?
That always stayed with me.
Kendall has a sensitivity and a fragility.
What does it feel like to play that kind of moment?
The gleaming?Theres this thing called a Seabob.
Its like a jet pack you ride on in the water.
You hold on to it and point the nose of it down.
Ive sometimes felt that I would go into this jet pack with Kendall.
It always felt like it was going down and down somewhere.
Its not going to lead him to some kind of clearing.
Kendall told us what he wanted from the first episode of the first season.
The show has explored the ways the thing he wants shapes, misshapes, and deforms him.
What is amazing and painful about episode six is that hes sort of lost.
We see the antics the charismatic, propulsive thing fall away for a moment.
I mean, were talking about addiction, right?
Theres nowhere else for him to go.
He needs to succeed in his objective.
And it costs him.
Terribly.We see this very gradually, the erosion, over the course of four seasons.
Thats Michael Corleone in theGodfathermovies.And thats the tragedy this show is.
We talked aboutThe Godfathera lot at the beginning.
Jesse and Mark Mylod said this was a show about family trauma.
Theyre all processing and dealing with the loss of their father in different ways.
Kendall is still tethered to his father.
The incident happens at night, in the rain, so its a satanic rebirth almost.Yeah!
The new Kendall might have been born in that accident, but it takes him a while to mature.
There is a ruthless pragmatism an amoral pragmatism that Kendall exhibits here that proves he is his fathers son.
Thats like that satanic birth you talk about, where Kendall comes up out of the water.
He has suffered an irrevocable loss of a piece of himself.
Of a piece of his humanity.
And its retaliation for Michael killing Sollozzo and McCluskey.
You cauterize a piece of yourself to make it enable another part of yourself to achieve its aim.
Theres a point where I say my father was essentially a machine for the completion of aims.
That is something Kendall has as well.
And the amorality that led his father to say No real person involved is now extant in him.
Because surviving that means embracing an individual, personalized version of that evil phrase, No real person involved.
He does feel that there was a real person involved.
But no fingerprints.I hadnt seen that before in Kendall.
I cant point to the moment when it happened, but it became No real person involved for Kendall.
You will see, as this season progresses, that there is more.
Its that slow leakage of his humanity that is very Michael Corleone.
Its like Tom Cruise on an aircraft carrier inTop Gun.
I made a Maverick jacket!
Thats what Kendall wanted that moment to be.
Then theres Kendall at the end of this episode going into the water again.
For the episode about Kendalls birthday, he chooses a place where theres lots of water falling or pooling.Yeah!
I also think aboutItaly in the pool.
And here we see him at the end of this episode in the water again.
But hes on his back floating.
Theres no danger.There was a sense of elation because of the product launch going well.
We shot at Zuma Beach in Malibu.
There were big swells that day.
Kendall is always somebody who is up against these big waves coming at him.
He has had to go through more than anyone.
I loved the metaphor of that.
This episode is where I got to put that into practice.
The wraith and the superbeing are both in there.
The superbeing feels that.
He just lets it all play out.
And on the way out of that scene, it looks to me like Kendall is walking differently.
We see growth in Kendall as a strategist and a tactician.
There is an operant thing there:Let this play out.
Dont show your hand.
Also, as at loggerheads as we are at certain points, Kendall is ultimately on Romans side.
He says to Matsson, This is just a tactic.
All is fair in love and war.
And its not him in this episode firing people just to prove he can do it.
Thats Roman.Kendall feels that, finally, his kingdom has come.
What was your opinion?
Because in a way, at that point, I wanted to get out.
I had been in abeyance in terms of taking a back seat to my brother and sister.
Then an old, deep need and craving returned.
I asked not to see that piece of paper until we were shooting the scene.
That means he made me hate him, then he died that would be a devastating thing for me.
It would be easier if my name had been crossed out.
But my life made sense if it was underlined.
I can see from the way you play this guy that youre feeling it.
But you dont strike me as one of those actors.
I dont know how todoit any other way.
I have to take it all on.
I cant escape it.
Its a responsibility that I personally feel is sacred.
Were water carriers as actors.
I have to carry that water.
I did feel the emotional whiplash and gyroscoping of this character.
So Im always struck when people talk about how cringeworthy Kendall is.
Youre not protecting yourself.No.No.
And I dont think I should.
Sometimes when Kendall is in pain, it looks to me likeyourein pain.
I know its just make-believe, but …See, I dont think itismake-believe.
I think the reason you feel my character is in pain is because Iamin pain.
I was in pain.
And theres a lot of work that goes into doing that.
Theres no way to do that right and shortchange yourself or protect yourself.
I went to seeRaging Bullat Film Forum the other day.
First of all, my God, what a film.
And Robert De Niros performance!
Thats the altar Im trying to make offerings on.
What do you think about that phrase I often hear in discussions among actors?
The body doesnt know youre acting.I actually dont know that one.
Unpack that for me?
[Strong grins as he pantomimes jabbing a stake through his own heart.]
Actors used to be buried at a crossroads …… with a stake through the heart.
I love that you memorized that quote.
I read something recently that differentiated between self-presentation and self-disclosure.
The kind of work Im interested in is disclosure, not presentation.
I hate the wordcringe, because it denotes a judgment.
Im not in the business of judging.
But certainly, as an actor, you cannot judge your character.
You cannot be above them.
You have to find a way to connect with them.
And if just one person passes me on the street and says, Thank you.
I felt that, it means I did my job.
I served the thing, and Im content.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
