Sarah Snook and the team behind “Succession” broke down the tense balcony fight between Shiv (Snook) and Tom (Matthew Macfadyden) as a part of Variety‘s “Making A Scene” presented by HBO. In addition to the Emmy-nominated Snook, the actress was joined by editor Ken Eluto, director of photography Patrick Capone, and co-directors Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman who were keen to break down the ins and outs of recording the long-awaited confrontation between the married couple.
The fight takes place during episode seven,”Tailgate Party”; however, Pulcini revealed that the “big moment” was not originally in the script.
“When this scene finally arrived, Shari and I were just overjoyed,” Pulcini said. “The writing was so unique for ‘Succession’ because ‘Succession’ is so much about subtext, it’s not really about direct confrontation. These two people dance around so many things and to have something so confrontational with these two was just such a gift.”
Sarah Snook said of the scene, “This fight was a long time coming, for Shiv and Tom to finally have an explosive moment, to really say what they thought about each other and also to express their deepest, rawest, most vulnerable emotions.”
Springer Berman said that the harrowing fight evoked “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and likened Shiv and Tom to another fictional married couple, George and Martha, known for their volatile arguments.
“I think [‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’] was the thing that was going on in our head as we were thinking about how to shoot it, where to shoot it and how to proceed with it,” she said.
The team broke down what it was like behind-the-scenes of the night shoot. They filmed over the course of at least a week, Pulcini recalled, and they had to keep close track of where actors moved in every shot to maintain consistency — they even used diagrams.
“But the actual filming of that language back and forth that the actors achieved so brilliantly happened in one day, one night,” Pulcini said.
While Macfadyden had his lines memorized the day before they shot, Snook hadn’t yet memorized hers. She recalled practicing with him said it was “really fun” and reminded her of rehearsing for a play.
Set just outside the window of the political party, filled with influential people, director of photography Patrick Capone said, “We wanted it to be a fishbowl, when you see it from inside looking out you just see this argument going on and you don’t really know what’s going on. So that was a really purposeful choice by the directors.”
Capone also revealed how the lighting had to be set up for such a scene. “One of the things we are very proud of on ‘Succession’ is we give our actors as much freedom as we can. We don’t block it. We really protect the performances. And I always give them the ability to go wherever they want to go. So having said that, I needed to light the entire balcony and I also needed to light it in such a way that we can look into the apartment and not see light,” he said.
During this fight, Tom tells Shiv that she wouldn’t be a good mother, a harrowing blow for Shiv, who the audience knows is pregnant. However, that wasn’t always the case for her character’s storyline.
“At that point we knew that Sarah Snook was pregnant, but we didn’t know that the character, that Shiv Roy, was going to be pregnant in the show yet…[we thought] oh it would be cool if she was pregnant, but it hadn’t been written into the script yet,” Springer Bergman said. The scene took on a new meaning once they decided that Snook’s character would also be pregnant.
Pulcini noted that “Succession” features a myriad of actors with all different styles but that Snook and Macfadyen have more in common than anyone else.
“I would say of the whole group these two are the most in sync with how they approach a scene. They’re a dream when they’re together,” Pulcini said.
Watch the full conversation above.
