SPOILER ALERT: This post discusses gargantuan plot developments in “Connor’s Wedding,” Season 4, Episode 3 of “Succession,” now streaming on HBO Max.
Jeremy Strong is speaking out for the first time about last week’s shocking “Succession” death. The star, who plays Kendall Roy on the HBO series, was front and center in the episode “Connor’s Wedding,” written by “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong, which featured the demise of family patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox).
“It went through my heart, not in my mind,” Strong told Variety. “What I mean is it went it didn’t go through my mind as much as I found it a heartbreaking thing to read and to experience when we were making it.”
Strong said he was indeed shocked, just like “Succession” fans, by “the suddenness of it, the banality of it the ordinariness of the way these things play out, the inability in a way to have the moment be what you want it to be. The suddenness of these things, and the that irrevocability of these kinds of things happening. The fact of of death, the fact of them, and now we have to contend with that grief and loss in the middle of, you know, a pit viper fight.”
The episode was directed by executive producer Mark Mylod, and centered on both the boat on which Connor Roy (Alan Ruck) and siblings Kendall, Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) are gathered, and the Waystar Royco plane, where Logan was flying with his executive team to Sweden, in order to try to salvage a deal.
Strong spoke to Variety on Saturday at the ninth annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony. The event, held at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, honors “the world’s leading scientists whose work fuels modern day scientific achievement.”
Strong and Cox haven’t necessarily seen eye-to-eye when it comes to acting styles — in particular, Strong’s use of method acting. Cox labeled Strong’s style “fucking annoying” in one interview and later vented his thoughts to Variety: “I’m sorry. All that sort of ‘I think, therefore I feel.’ Just do the job. Don’t identify.”
Read Variety’s interview with Mylod about directing “Connor’s Wedding” here. Full details on how the episode went down here. And how the producers kept the storyline from leaking here.
“Succession” Season 4 airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
