Succession planning:
Succession, a new comedy drama about an ageing media mogul and his dysfunctional family, starts on SoHo this week. Jane Mulkerrins catches up with the show’s cast and creator.
How to give away a fortune.
It is not always easy to feel sympathy for billionaires but writer Jesse Armstrong, creator of the new SoHo comedy drama Succession, would like you to at least consider their plight.
“I do think it’s really tough being super-rich, really hard-working, bringing up your kids, and wanting to get this sort of immortality by passing on the organisation,” he says. “But then looking at your kids and thinking, ‘Oh, they’re just these privileged people who haven’t had to struggle. Am I really going to just give it all to them?’ ”
Succession’s patriarch – Logan Roy, a gruff, irascible, self-made New York tycoon – is finally ready to retire from the media empire he has built from scratch. The question for him, certainly, is who he trusts enough to hand the reins over to.
“It’s an absolutely classical story – a man giving away his empire. It’s King Lear,” says the veteran Scottish actor Brian Cox, who plays the prickly, demanding Logan.
Logan’s four children, from two previous marriages, are entitled and privileged, and certainly do not seem qualified to take on his mantle. His significantly younger third wife, Marcia (Hiam Abbass), meanwhile, is nobody’s fool.
His eldest son, Connor, is ‘damaged goods’, according to the actor who plays him, Alan Ruck.
“He suffers from a delusional disorder. He’s got big political ambitions, which are completely out of his league, but he doesn’t see it.
“And because he has had this great big wall of money around him and all these people to help him, he’s gone 50-plus years not ever really having to work. And not ever having to really deal with anybody he didn’t want to deal with. He’s a real trust-fund baby.”
Jeremy Strong, who plays Kendall, Logan’s second-eldest son and heir
apparent, says of his character, “Kendall, while not exactly an enlightened businessman, is certainly more in touch with the zeitgeist and the way the winds are blowing in the digital age. He sees that this company’s not going to survive in its current incarnation and that his father’s way of navigating the world is done.”
The only daughter, Siobhan – known to all as Shiv and played by Sarah Snook – is, in fact, more like her father than her brothers.
“She’s just a viper, a killer,” says Ruck. “She’s definitely the most like the old man; she’s cut from that cloth.”
However, her gender counts against her, even in her own family.
“When Logan looks at her, he’s thinking she’s the most able and self-possessed one of them all,” says Armstrong.
“But he also has quite an unreconstructed sexist attitude, so his daughter is probably not going to be the one who takes over.
“But, weirdly, that has left her with a bit more latitude in her choices in life, which you see in the show.”
Cut from an entirely different cloth is the youngest son, Roman, played by Kieran Culkin – a foul-mouthed and flippant womaniser, with many of the show’s best lines.
“Roman’s spent his whole life without having to suffer the consequences of anything,” Culkin says.
“He’s never had to pay for anything he’s had to do. He just says and does whatever the hell he wants.
“He’s the kind of guy who walks into any situation, any room, and just makes himself comfortable,” Culkin continues. “Sometimes it’s as silly as finding the best seat, just to be like ‘ **** you guys, I got the good chair’.
“And sometimes it’s a little more psychological – making fun of somebody, chopping them down, so he gets to feel bigger.”
While comparisons between the fictitious Roys and Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch are inevitable, Armstrong insists any likenesses are incidental.
And, he points out, there are many other media families to borrow elements from too.
“Family ownership of big media organisations is widespread in the US, but not all of those families are dysfunctional in the way that our fictional one is,” he says.
There is, of course, another prominent and wealthy New York family, whose dynastic approach to the political world has horrified many since November 2016. “This is not a Trump roman-a-clef by the back door,” Armstrong insists. “But there’s a growing vein of scepticism and interest in what extreme wealth means and how it’s acquired.”