So my favorite TV show came to an end.
Sunday succession
concluded a brilliant fourth season
run on HBO with its highest rated episode
since the show's debut.
According to Warner Brothers, Discovery,
which also owns CNN.
If you're unfamiliar with succession,
it's an incredibly engrossing
look at the battle
between three siblings
to succeed their larger than life
kind of monstrous father's
head of a major media conglomerate.
It's a tragedy, really, on an epic scale
that also feels deeply personal
because the writing,
the acting is so strong.
It's also at times very funny.
It's won a number of Emmy awards,
including for its acting,
which includes
my next guest, Jeremy Strong,
who plays Kendall Roy.
He joins us tonight
for his first television interview
since the finale.
We warn you
there are many, many spoilers ahead about
what happens in the finale.
So are you glad it's over?
Because, I mean,
from everything I've read about you
and heard you say,
you are very deeply
you embody the character.
You you're intensely into your character.
Are you glad you're no longer Kendall?
Yeah.
I mean, look, I think it was
it's been the role of a lifetime.
It's been an immeasurable gift to get to
sort of,
you know, run the gantlet
with this character.
It was heavy of seal
of responsibility
to to serve the writing and embody
what the writers are asking
the character to go through.
So that but that heaviness,
I mean, it's incredibly heavy.
And until the last episode, only
I saw Kendall's smile.
Yeah, I
and then we'll talk about this scene but
is it heavy
then when the cameras aren't rolling
and you're back home
and you're,
you know, going out to the grocery store,
I think in the eight months
when you're filming,
you know, you sort of go
on airplane mode a bit in your life
and you take on the the material
and it kind of takes over
where it hangs over you. Right.
I mean, you know,
the show was always it's Shakespearean.
It was always heavy
as the head wears the crown.
And there is a sense of that heaviness,
especially with this character,
the final scene where Kendall is walking
toward the water and his security guy
who was his father,
security guys following him.
When I was watching it,
I thought you were going to run
to the water and jump over
and try and attempt to kill yourself.
You didn't do that.
But I read that you actually
you as a character felt that way
and you actually did a take that way.
Yeah, I did.
I did try and go in the water
One of the
incredible things
about working on something
for seven years
since we started the pilot
and just having
40 hours a canvas of
40 hours of storytelling
is just your instincts for the thing
become a part of you.
And are very alive.
And,
you know,
your job is to give the writing,
you know, of heart and nerve.
And sinew
and density and weight
and all that stuff.
And then at a certain point,
I think something,
if you're lucky,
something kind of ineffable happens
and you enter into it.
And the character has
just been put through
so much has been through
so much hell, really.
From the Chappaquiddick incident to
in a way,
almost the most heartbreaking thing to me
is the revelation
in this final episode of this moment
when he was nine years old
at the candy kitchen
where his father says, one day
this will be yours. And and the sort of
curse of that, the sentence of that.
So I felt
that this is an extinction level event.
I didn't feel that
your character come back from
what happens to him.
I mean,
what do you think happens to each other?
Because I thought about this
a lot after the observer,
like where does Kindle
what happens to Kindle later on
in his life?
What is the rest of his life like?
What is shaves life like?
What is Roman's life like? Roman clearly.
I mean, the way
he was looking at that martini.
Yeah. Scary.
Seems like alcohol is good.
I think. I think so.
I think that there's a real
vortex that he's going to get and shiv
that extraordinary non handhold
where you.
Yeah.
Kevin versus also like
I mean, it was incredible.
No, it's true. It's terrible.
You know, she's sort of
it's a great capitulation
and and the patriarchy has has triumphed
and you know and it's not for me to say
how the show should end it's
for Jesse Armstrong
the you know there
but for the grace of of him
when all of us this whole time
and his writing and the depth of it and
and his insight into human nature.
I think he feels that people are kind of
stuck in too doomed to repeat themselves.
Yeah.
I mean you imagine shiv in Tom,
you know, in some sterile
palatial penthouse
somewhere living their lives on the floor
with their unhappy child,
you know, her.She
a kind of unhappy mother and Kendall,
I heard Jesse Armstrong say,
I think in the aftershow
that, you know, maybe
Kendall will start a company
or something, but it'll never quite
this will be the defining moment
of his life and sort of the stain
that marks his life. I think
yeah.
In that moment,
you know, one of the,
one of the great joys of, of working
on this show
in particular and making movies
is is the sort of discoveries you make,
you know, in situ.
And so the, the, the,
the collaborative nature of the medium.
We had a great deal of latitude
and freedom
to follow those instincts and impulses.
And in the scene,
we're actually shooting. Yeah, yeah.
I want to show the scene.
You're in Barbados and you
I mean, there's incredible well,
emotionally charged
family reunion has occurred and
they have anointed you.
You are going to be the one
to take over the company.
And I just want to show this
drink up
This is going to be all right.
Right. Like
we're all right.
Yeah.
Just drink it.
Up
Oh, my God.
Oh, kings don't wear silly hats.
Kingsbury drink anymore.
Well, then don't wear your crown, sir.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No. Around.
Wear your crown.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Not Mom.
King
I mean, it was a beautiful scene.
It was incredibly beautiful.
And so I just found it so touching.
And so you think going into it
and there's this momentum
going into the last few minutes
of the show, and.
Yeah, it's heartbreaking.
I find it heartbreaking and very sad.
Such a tragedy.
Yeah.
And there's a kind of unadulterated
happiness that they have with each other.
And you see, you can sort of glimpse
an alternate thing for them.
I just finished with the scene
of of
the critical vote
is is taking place,
and Shiv walks out of the room
and you need her vote
in order to take over your dad's company.
Right. Let's just watch this.
Vote for me.
Just please vote for me to vote for me.
No.
Yes.
Shiv, don't do this.
I can't do this.
No, absolutely not, man.
Absolutely not.
No. Why not? Why?
What? Just.
I love you.
I really.
I love you. But I can't stomach you.
This is disgusting.
It's disgusting.
You're disgusting.
You're fucking heartless.
It's nuts.
It doesn't even make any sense.
I feel this boy.
I am the oldest boy.
You. And you know this.
It mattered to him.
He wanted this to go on
I'm the oldest boy
that
that was written.
I mean, that was that.
That scene, that box
within a box in that box.
Like building. Yeah.
I mean, there's
just so much going on in that.
Yeah, well, you know,
it
this is a moment where
there's a writers strike, right?
And so it feels important
to say that none of this show,
this show doesn't exist
with the writing is
that the writing is everything.
It's everything that's all scripted.
Every, you know, every every word.
But it's really this
a show about the underneath.
As I think
Shiv says to Tom in this episode,
it's about the underneath of
of these people
of their struggles,
the underneath of the country.
And that's the profundity of it.
And but I think, you know, this scene uh,
it's brutal for me to watch
it's just, uh,
you know,
it's, it's that Greek idea.
That character is fate.
I think from the very beginning,
uh, this, this was,
this was going to happen.
Well, thank you for, uh,
for being here and for your performance
for the last seven years.
Thank you so much.
So much.
Just joy and thought and emotion
into so many peoples
lives and mine in particular.
So thank thanks to energy.
Really appreciate it.