Sunday’s episode of “Succession,” titled “America Decides,” offered a heart-pounding hour of television as Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) oversee ATN’s first election coverage since the shocking death of Logan (Brian Cox) – and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
After Shiv and Roman argue over whether to call the election for the far-right Jeryd Mencken, Kendall becomes racked with guilt about ultimately backing him in an effort to put a stop to the Gojo deal. Earlier in the episode, he receives a concerned call from his ex-wife Rava (Natalie Gold) about being followed by an SUV, only for that concern to quickly turn to anger as she learns that it was Kendall that ordered the vehicle in an attempt to protect her and their adopted daughter Sophie, who is pushed and has racial slurs thrown at her by a Mencken follower in the previous episode.
TheWrap spoke with Gold about collaborating with Jeremy Strong over the course of the HBO drama series, returning for the final season and the “unrest” that’s yet to come. Check out TheWrap’s full conversation below.
What’s it like to work on the final season one of the biggest drama series of our time?
It’s been six years of the most deeply creative and fulfilling projects I’ve ever had the joy and the luck to work on and I am forever grateful to Jesse Armstrong, to his team of writers, to this brilliant cast and crew, to our directors, to the executives at HBO. It’s the most creative freedom I’ve ever had, it’s the most fun show that I’ve ever worked on. So it’s a kind of a dream and it’s sad that it’s over, but it’s also kind of perfect that it’s over. I think they are the smartest writers out there and have done an epically beautiful final season.
How much of the storyline for the season did Jesse Armstrong lay out for the cast before filming started?
I can only speak for myself and I knew less than I think a lot of the other actors on the show because I enter in later. The cast and crew and writers on “Succession” had a hard job in keeping a very hard secret, but they did exceptionally well. So when I was brought in for episode seven and I read the script, my mouth was basically on the floor because it was pretty clear that Logan had died and I wrote Jesse an email and said, ‘I’m pretty speechless. I don’t know if I’m allowed to put this in an email. I have so many questions, should we talk on set? Should we talk by email? I don’t wanna say anything. I don’t want to ruin anything, but I have some blanks to fill in.’ So he was very wonderful. Before we shot episode seven, we had a wonderful talk about kind of what had happened so far leading up to the events of this episode and where my character had been or not been and why my character had not been involved until this point.
How has Rava’s relationship with Kendall evolved over the course of the series?
First of all, I think that Jesse and his team of writers have created such an incredible character in Rava. She’s a straightforward, funny, intelligent, vulnerable, complicated woman. I have loved playing her. I have loved figuring her out and her evolution with Kendall. Obviously, she starts the series being separated from him. But she is doing in her mind her very best to make everything nice. I think we start seeing that there is love between them, there’s attraction, there was a marriage there and I think Rava really genuinely wants him and has always rooted for him to be healthy, happy, sober and a present co-parent to their children. She keeps showing up with the kids to all the Roy family events. She’s separated from this guy but she knows this family is pretty hard to get out of and she’s trying to do everything to make it OK and that obviously starts to fracture.
I don’t think Rava was ever the biggest Logan fan. I think he was the father-in-law from hell. You know, he hits her kid in the face in the Thanksgiving episode in Season 1. But she also starts to see Kendall going back to familiar and dangerous patterns of behavior, which is why she left him initially. And I think in his manic behavior, Rava and the kids are always the collateral damage and I think she tries and tries and eventually gets to a point where she just realizes she can’t fix him and she stops trying.
In my mind, I think Rava has gone to a lot of therapy. Maybe she has some unsanctioned, exclusive private Al-anon meetings in her nice apartment because going to a public meeting wouldn’t be an option given her relationship to the Roys. But I think what we’re seeing is that her very patient veneer and her compassion for him which she always holds, especially in this season, is really starting to crack. She’s getting pushed too far and I think kind of the brilliance of this season and the storyline for Rava and Kendall in this season, especially as it plays into their daughter, she just finally loses it. He crosses the line.
He accuses her of being an absent parent, which I don’t even have words to express how mortifying that is. She can’t hold it together anymore. We’re finally getting to see her get pissed. I think she’s usually pretty good at holding it in. And I think she’s cracking and I also think she’s really scared. Obviously, her daughter is getting pushed on the street, her daughter is having racial slurs thrown at her by some guy in a Ravenhead shirt and then Kendall’s solution in Episode 8 is to put security on them without consulting her or telling her and basically scaring them even more and the solution is basically putting a band aid on a gaping head wound.
It’s so beautifully written, I think, because firsthand we’re seeing the media machine of the Roys, the evil and the hatred that is spouted on their network, how they’re ushering in this fascist president. Kendall and Rava’s daughter is a real person suffering because of that and there are millions of people suffering because of that. But this one hits close to home for Rava and for Kendall as well because it is home, and I think Rava is genuinely scared and I think she is taking a good hard look at not only Kendall’s complicity but her own complicity in this situation. So, I think this season we’re seeing Rava really just start to be done making things nice.
What has been like collaborating with Jeremy Strong over the course of the series and on the final season?
It’s been incredibly, incredibly fun. For as difficult as those scenes are, so much fun. Jeremy is a tremendous actor, he is deeply committed, he’s deeply invested. Jeremy and I met on the pilot, although knew of each other, we had both done a lot of theater in New York, but we had never gotten a chance to work together. But I remember that first day that we shot our very first scene on the pilot, there was this feeling of immediate chemistry and a sense of history between our characters, which is obviously a testament to the writing because the writing is so good, but there was something intangible between him and I that just felt like there were decades of history between us and it was a beautiful feeling because I felt just immediately familiar with him and trusting of him. So everything that I’m lucky enough to have with him on this show, that history just continues to deepen and we continue to play with the love between each other, the hurt, the resentment, the attraction, the disappointment, I think in Rava’s mind the unfulfilled potential. It’s so much fun to play.
These are all painful scenes, beautiful scenes but the excitement of working on the writing on this show as well as working with Jeremy and just the environment that Jesse and the entire cast and crew creates on this show is that there’s so much trust. So I get to show up knowing obviously what the scene we’re gonna shoot is that day, but just see what happens and be so alive and spontaneous and I just feel really lucky that we get to play these things together because I never quite know how they’re gonna go or what’s gonna happen which is amazing as an actor. That’s kind of what you wish for, that lightning-in-a-bottle feeling of I don’t know how this is gonna play out. Let’s see. And there’s so much trust that we’re just allowed to do it a million different ways and a million different takes and each take it goes another way and then what they end up using is a value to the overall story that they’re telling. It all starts from the writing. But working with Jeremy has been pretty magical.
How much of your scene work has been improvisation versus what’s on the page?
What’s on the page is so deeply brilliant that there’s nothing that I would ever deign to read that just one of his writers have written and would think that I would want or need to change that by any means. What they do is really give you the luxury of time in filming a scene. So you absolutely do what’s on the page which is a joy to do. And then you see kind of where that takes you. You get some that are directly what’s on the page and you get some that there’s an improv that comes before the scene starts or after the scene starts, things that happen. It’s also the joy in working. There’s just so much trust there, there’s nothing you have to improv but there’s stuff that comes up that you end up improving just because they let the camera run for so long that they give you the room to do so.
The trust that is built up there and the trust that Jesse has in his actors saying, “You know your characters.” He knows the characters. I’m not gonna speak for Jesse, but he is so invested in the emotional truth of the characters that everything he writes, everything that the writers write is based in such deep emotional truth that we always do what’s on the page. And then if there’s a surprise, then we get to go with that and they love it.
We filmed Episode 7 and there was some improv in there. Will Tracy wrote that episode and I said “Will, did we go off too much?” And he said, “It was messy goodness. I felt that that was messy goodness. Real people talking messy goodness. That was a messy fight.” And I think they were happy with that.
What are some of your favorite memories from working on the show? What will you miss the most?
Every moment I get to spend on set – and I am not saying this hyperbolically – is a favorite moment because it’s the best cast, it’s the best crew, directors, writers. We had at least three writers on set at all times throwing alternate lines at us, answering questions, solving problems, spinning gold. We have our brilliant directors, all of them, and I get to work a lot with Mark Mylod who I love. We do a scene a million times and then he says, “Great, we’ve got it, let’s do another one just for fun, do whatever you want.” It’s just allowing for an environment that fosters unbelievable collaboration and that’s what I’m gonna miss the most, the collaboration, because for me the joy of making something is in the collaboration and the community and I’m going to miss this community.
What can you tease about the remainder of the season?
I think it’s safe to say you’re gonna see a funeral. I think Rava is terrified by this election, I think she is terrified for her kids, she’s terrified for the country and I think she knows Kendall had something to do with this. His network made the call, nothing happens on his network without his ok. So I think in that phone call, I think Rava is beside herself. I think she’s terrified. And I think she knows Kendall maybe ended up selling out his own kid for his own benefit. It’s not that simple, obviously, but in Rava’s mind, think that’s what she thinks is Kendall will pick Kendall first and in that phone call, that’s what’s going through her mind. And I think she’s scared. I think I can tease a little unrest in the world.
This season takes place in such a very compressed amount of time. Like it’s really happening over 10 days. So when he says I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow, elections happen on a Tuesday. So I can tell you that episode nine would be the very next day.
I could never deign to predict [how the season is going to play out] because any time I think, ‘Oh, this is where they’re gonna go.’ It’s never where they go. They’re too smart for me and they’re so subtle. The writing is so beautiful. I think the ending will be perfect because it’s Jesse and his team who have written it. And I think it will play out exactly how it is supposed to, whatever that means. But any time I’ve ever tried to predict where this show is going to go, I’ve just been dead wrong and then I read the script and my mouth is hanging on the floor and I kind of slap my forehead and go, ‘Oh my God, they’re so genius. Of course, this makes so much sense’ and it’s just too subtle and so unobvious and so human. They’re so brilliant at what they do and walking this fine line of the tone of the show because all of these characters that they’ve created, they’re living, breathing complicated, funny, real people and they have made hilarity in the most tragic moments and they have made deep sadness in the funniest moments. So how it ends, I don’t know, but I know it will be perfect.
What are your thoughts on the Writers Guild of America strike?
My take overall on the strike is that there is nothing without writers. There is no story without writers, there are no words without writers, there is no content without writers. They are the lifeblood of every creative thing that we get to see. So I as an actor and especially in talking about “Succession,” we could not have done “Succession” without the writers being on set with us answering questions, literally writing in real-time, they never stopped working. So I support the writers. They need to get what they deserve.
I want to make it clear. I’m an actor. We don’t exist without writers. And I’m a part of a union too. I stand with them, I support them and they need to get what they deserve. There is nothing without writers.
