New York City — It could be that Jeremy Strong has been making quite an impact in Hollywood for his acclaimed performances in films based on true stories that it was inevitable for him to get handpicked to play the composite character of Kendall Roy in the brand-new HBO drama series Succession, which premiered yesterday across the globe.
Strong was recently seen in big Hollywood projects Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln (as John George Nicolay), Parkland (as Lee Harvey Oswald), Selma (as James Reeb), Black Mass and The Big Short. His foray as Kendall embodies that of a well-researched persona by the show’s creator and show runner Jesse Armstrong who chronicles the travails of an heir to a large media conglomerate loosely inspired by real-life personalities and based on facts culled from prominent families in the upper class society of the world.
Kendall is the eldest son of aging patriarch Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox) of a huge media conglomerate called Waystar Royco. He is currently a division president at the firm and the heir apparent to the throne that suddenly becomes as volatile as his father’s health.
In a brief chat with select members of the Succession cast at the Mandarin Oriental in this city recently, Strong confessed that his role didn’t immediately appeal to him when it was first offered by director Adam McKay whom he had worked with in The Big Short. The show was described to him as “a King Lear-meets-the-media-industrial-complex type” where the Roy family is put under a microscope and the audience gets to see the ways by which their dysfunction as a family leads to the dysfunction of the world because of the power and influence that this family wields.
Strong said that when he read the script, his instinct was to go for the role of Kendall’s younger brother, the outspoken, fun-loving and quirky Roman (eventually played by Kieran Culkin, who auditioned for the role, himself). He said, “Roman was such a fun part, kind of bon vivant prick. I thought it was a very colorful, vivid character. As an actor, I like working on characters that I can create and that I have to travel quite a distance from myself to inhabit them. I thought Roman was such a fun thing to do and Kendall was kind of boring.”
As it turned out, Succession’s prime movers — Armstrong, McKay, Frank Rich, Kevin Messick, Will Ferrell, Jane Tranter and Mark Mylod — all wanted him for Kendall’s part.
“And so I read it again and I found out that it was much deeper than what I realized. But also I think my distance from it initially was there was actually so much of me in this character and it was a little close to the bone in a way and that made me uncomfortable,” he confessed.
Strong said in the same way, the discomfort in a way gave him the right kind of challenge. He said, “I was not this character but there’s a lot of elements in this character that are alive in me so I think also that it is the right character for me to play. The right kind of shadow that the character struggles with, his ambition and his need for a certain kind of approval and validation, these were all things that I can relate to.”
Jeremy and co-star Brian Cox, who plays the aging patriarch Logan Roy, in a scene from the drama series
Strong understood that Kendall aspires to be aggressive and macho much like his role in The Big Short. He explained, “Kendall is not but he tries to be, he is trying very hard to be that certain kind of tough alpha businessman the way he sees his father and the way he thinks his father wants him to be. And while I think he is very capable and very smart, I do actually think his father’s methods are kind of outdated and backward-looking, analogue in a digital world. And Kendall sees that the global media scene is transforming. And looking at the alphabets and googles of the world, he knows that Waystar Royco and its current configuration is not sustainable. That newspapers and local TV — that’s not the name of the game anymore.”
In a deeper sense, Strong saw Succession from the perspective of Kendall as being about legacy and family, and begged to answer the questions: “Can you escape your legacy? Can you escape the legacy that you inherit? Are you defined by it?”
The actor also had words of wisdom to share in the words of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung — “Where love rules, there is no will to power. And where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” Strong summed up the experience of the protagonists in the HBO show, “In a sense, the problem in this family and the problem in a lot of other families in our society and the world around us is while these characters are seeking power and believe that what they need is power, they might actually need the other thing more.”
Along with Strong, Cox and Culkin, the other members of the cast of Succession are Hiam Abbass (as Marcia, the third wife of Logan), Sarah Snook (Kendall’s sister Shiv), Alan Ruck (Kendall’s half-brother Connor), Nicholas Braun (Kendall’s cousin Greg), Matthew Macfadyen (Tom, fiancé of Shiv), Natalie Gold (Kendall’s ex-wife), Peter Friedman (Frank, an executive of Waystar) and Rob Yang (a digital and tech expert).
Winding down, we asked Strong if he was generally satisfied with his performance in the 10 episodes of the first season of Succession and if he had expectations from it.
“In every take, I don’t really know what’s gonna come out of me and I don’t know what I’m looking for, except for a moment of truth which you cannot control and which comes unbidden if it comes at all. It’s like surfing. I don’t surf but I imagine every time I come out there’s another chance to catch a wave. So, I happily try and catch as many waves as possible. It’s hard sometimes to move on when you feel you haven’t caught a wave and you often have to. And that can be very painful. But I have so much trust in the producers and director and Jesse Armstrong. There are times I might not feel I caught a wave, but if they tell me they found one then I should be alright by it,” he concluded.
(Succession airs on HBO, HBO Now, HBO Go, HBO On Demand and partners’ streaming platforms.)