See full version: Inside Jeremy Strong; s; Dangerous; Approach to; Succession; and That; Cringeworthy; Rap
Once committed, Strong was naturally going to take it all the way. At the actor’s request, Britell sent a demo of himself doing the rap. Strong used that to practice until he felt like he could comfortably do it by heart. He even added a melody to the chorus, “L to the OG,” which carried the whole scene — sending it viral, becoming a meme and, apparently, a Halloween costume of Kendall in his rap outfit. here
“What I loved about that is that it was an example of a way in which Jesse put me through the wringer,” Strong said. “I like to take risks, but that one certainly I haven’t done before. I had three or four days to prepare and learn and do it. So it felt like walking the plank. And it was fun. “Rapping feels very empowering, that alone was nice — to have a chance to express my love for my father.”
“That scene on the boat, we started to rehearse and we were losing the light,” Strong recalled. “I felt strongly that we shouldn’t release any tension that I felt I had by rehearsing it. So I stopped the rehearsal, to Brian’s consternation. [links]
Dangerous is a good word for what happens in this particular scene as Kendall, the oldest son, is told that he will need to take the fall for the family: Protect Dad, absorb the blow, soldier on. Logan delivers the message with all his alpha energy, unembellished and unapologetic. Kendall, the broken son, listens and buries his response a thousand leagues deep in his soul. The scene is a masterful example of what makes Succession such a roiling cauldron of subterranean emotion, driven by two lead actors who duel to the very edge of emotional cataclysm.
“Brian is… just a force of nature. Such a heavyweight actor. He’s been on the mountaintop for so long. He has that thing that is a rare quality with actors, which is a sense of danger — there’s something primal about him,” Strong said. “He listens completely. I don’t ever feel like we’re acting. I don’t feel like we’re doing scenes, I feel like we’re meeting in the ring.”
Even as an adolescent, Strong’s aim was the theater. He went to Yale, with its legendary theater program, though his degree is in English literature. He debuted on Broadway in 2008, winning acclaim for his performances there and off Broadway, including in “A Man for All Seasons.” He was one of the recipients of the 2008-09 Leonore Annenberg Fellowship for the Performing and Visual Arts, in collaboration with the Lincoln Center Theater. more
Demos continued: "There are no surprises and it becomes a lot less intimidating than what you'd think because you end up rehearsing those scenes more than anything else. Just making sure that you have an open line of communication, that everyone just feels safe." here
Speaking to Extra TV, Shahi joked she was "scared almost every day" on set to film the steamy scenes.
"I was okay with it because you read the script and know what you're getting yourself into from the start, so I don't think you would sign on to a show after reading the scripts and then say no last minute. [links]
She said: "I had so many nude scenes in succession that by the end, I was just like, 'Well, a body's a body.' But the intimacy part of it—that was always nerve-wracking."
In conversation with Monsters and Critics, Vogel admitted he was unsure if you ever "get comfortable" with nudity and sex scenes.
Outside of Watchmen walking away with the limited series title, the 2020 Emmys seem to offer few sure bets. If you’re talking about almost sure bets, however, Succession may be just that. HBO’s sophomore drama was an instant industry favorite when it premiered in 2018. And while it stood zero chance of topping network neighbor Game of Thrones to win best drama in 2019, its first Emmys did include one very auspicious win in drama writing for creator Jesse Armstrong. Ozark and, to a lesser extent, The Crown present real threats to Succession‘s favorite status. But many insiders have been saying for nearly a year, back when the series’ sophomore run seemed to outshine the season that preceded it, that this race is Succession‘s to lose. — MICHAEL O’CONNELL
Interview edited for length and clarity.
Not really. I feel like the great pleasure of doing a show is that you try and say something without saying it. You’re trying to make people feel a certain way and certain things without saying them out loud and the danger of playing that particular game is that people might misconstrue you or not hear you clearly because you don’t want to be too clear because then it feels like you’re writing propaganda or you’re in the world of politics, not in the world of craft and art. So I don’t mind. It’s all our fault, up to a point, what we’ve done.
The Succession jokes abounded when James Murdoch resigned from News Corp in July. How much do you pay attention to news like that as you’re writing? [links]
The tentative plan is, ideally, in the late fall around Christmas to start shooting, but it’s nothing we can totally commit to because we just have to respond to the situation with the pandemic. But we’re trying to make plans, and I’m trying to focus my own mind and that of my fellow writers on a realistic timetable. Ultimately, nobody knows, so we’ve got to try and remain flexible.
If you would excuse me, I won’t get into the stuff of the next season, just so it’s fresh for when people get it and enjoy it, hopefully. But I’m being flexible if there are things creatively that I and the writing team can do to make it more filmable. We won’t make any compromises which mean the show is worse, but we are willing to think about how we can do this thing safely on a doable timeline. We’re trying to help the physical production from the writing room. more
Rupert Murdoch tried a similar tactic with his own family. From the Times: [links]
Logan Roy has four children: Connor from his first marriage; Kendall, Roman, and Siobhan from his second marriage.
Both Logan and Rupert’s first children are largely out of the conversation about who will take over the company. According to the Times, Prudence "kept some distance from the family business;" in Succession, Connor spends his time tending to his ranch in the middle of New Mexico and recording a podcast about Napoleon Bonaparte. more
In Succession, Logan tries to get around antitrust laws to purchase local TV stations to further push conservative messaging (a strategy that more closely mirrors the Sinclair family, which owns a number of local TV channels and pushes it's own version of conservative politics and values on viewers).
It’s been clear that Fox News is seen as the most powerful messaging tool of the Trump White House, but the Times story spells out how Rupert has built brands in the U.S., Europe, and Australia which have, more than any other media company, “enabled it, promoted it and profited from” the current right-wing populist movement.
The Times piece describes the relationship between Rupert and his two sons this way: more
So in one of the first scenes of the movie kat sees a ‘mistress’ dive off the boat, which is her future self we find out later, but if she sees herself dive off the boat 1.wouldn’t that mean andrei was dead? and since that scene went on we know he wasn’t dead because he was in the following scenes, i know that they inversed themselves to go back in time to that day to stop the end of the world but that brings me to my second question. 2.On that first yacht scene that we see why didn’t the world end there? 3.does that imply that there’s two timelines or am i missing something?
Everything is happening at the same time and infact the Sator that dies at the end (when Kat dives into the water from the yacht) is Sator who recently returned from Tallinn. The Sator who gets into a fight with the earlier Kat leaves the yacht to overseeing the Opera siege. So it's like Sator's past self left the yacht making room for his future self to return to this point. Almost as if he had planned it that way.