Succession cast spill on characters on the eve of Emmy-winning series’ third season
Television’s most dysfunctional family is back for a third season. See what some of the cast have to say about what’s in store for the Emmy-winning show.
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Kieran Culkin is musing over who among the cast of the mega TV hit Succession is the least like their “shitty” characters.
“There’s a good deal of the real person in almost all of these characters,” laughs Culkin, who admits to enjoying a “f--k you” as much as his on screen alter-ego, media heir, Roman Roy.
“But Matthew [Macfadyen] and Tom are two very different people — like wildly different people,” Culkin tells Insider in New York where the cast has gathered to talk about the Emmy-winning show’s highly anticipated third season.
“And I could say the same about Shiv and [Sarah] Snook as well. But with Matthew and Tom it’s really like looking at two different people. I don’t know how Matthew finds Tom in there,” Culkin giggles, “because it’s not at all present inside him. He walks off set and all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Who is that person?’ Even his posture changes.”
“I hope I’m different from Tom,” laughs Macfadyen, the British actor who plays the hapless bully Tom Wambsgans, husband to Logan Roy’s only daughter, Shiv (Aussie actress Sarah Snook).
“I always say this — it’s great therapy playing somebody so ludicrous,” the quietly spoken Macfadyen says.
“It’s great to be as excruciating as Tom can be, or as sort of bizarrely aggressive and bullying and sycophantic, so I can get all of that stuff out of my system. Maybe the further away your character is from you, the more enjoyable it is.”
Season three of Succession deals with the fallout of Kendall’s (Jeremy Strong) decision to launch a full-scale mutiny against his father, Logan (Brian Cox), for control of the family’s media empire, Waystar Royco.
Culkin’s Roman is firmly in his dad’s corner (while slyly eyeing off the CEO role when Logan finally steps aside or ends up in jail) and the sycophantic Tom is hoping to finally win his billionaire father-in-law’s approval by offering to take the legal fall and go to prison for him. (Tom’s biggest concern: jailhouse wine. “They make it with ketchup and fruit in a bag,” he tells wife Shiv in abject horror.)
The show has been a stunning hit for HBO and is considered something of a cultural touchstone for its biting commentary on wealth, power and the ever-increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots.
But at the show’s core, fans just can’t get enough of the plain old familial dramas inside the obscenely wealthy and dysfunctional Roy clan.
“Dysfunctional … What is a functional family?” screeches Culkin. “I don’t understand what this thing is – a dysfunctional family. Just say family! Yeah, they’re nuts, you’re nuts, I’m nuts, we’re all nuts. Carry on.”
Culkin says three seasons in, he hasn’t tired of playing the sarcastic yet fundamentally damaged, Roman.
“I remember reading the pilot script and literally his first line is ‘Hey, hey mother------s’ and I thought that looks like fun,” grins Culkin, who was originally scouted for the role of Cousin Greg. (He sent in a tape of him reading Roman’s lines to the show’s creator Jesse Armstrong instead and was immediately cast).
“I like being able to remove the filter,” Culkin explains. “I made one choice at the beginning when we were doing the pilot, which was this guy probably never has experienced having to suffer any kind of consequence for his actions – ever. There’s always a solution, there’s always some way of saving him, so there’s no danger in saying anything. And that is mighty, mighty fun.”
The entire cast agrees that getting to inhabit a world of private jets, helicopters, yachts, mansions and New York skyscrapers is also very good fun.
“We shoot in very glamorous locations, which is nice,” Macfadyen says.
“I love being an actor because — at its very basic level — it’s just make-believe, and certainly with this show, we film in these great big skyscrapers downtown and pretend they’re our offices or these superyachts or you know, we were in Tuscany at the end of last season so it’s great fun. It won’t always be like this. My next job won’t be as glamorous. I’ll be in a shed somewhere.”
Season three of Succession premieres on Foxtel on October 18.
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