Consumers can track down the perfect bag to hold flat shoes for the subway and a lunch pail, in the words of Tom (Matthew Macfayden).
The “Succession” Season 4 premiere didn’t just spike ratings — it spiked search engines.
Following a viral scene in which Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) shades Greg’s (Nicholas Braun) date Bridget, played by Francesca Root-Dodson, searches for the “ludicrously capacious” bag in question have skyrocketed.
During patriarch Logan’s (Brian Cox) dismal birthday party, Tom slams Bridget’s Burberry tote bag.
“What’s even in there? Flat shoes for the subway? Her lunch pail? I mean, Greg, it’s monstrous,” Tom says. “It’s gargantuan. You can take it camping. You could slide it across the floor after a bank job.”
Per Yahoo!, searches for the official Burberry Medium Title Vintage Check Two-Handle Bag, which retails for $2,890, jumped 310 percent according to Google Trends data provided by virtual fitting room company 3DLOOK. Subsequent searches for “Burberry handbag” went up 180 percent, with “Burberry tote” increasing by 25 percent.
“I wouldn’t go as far as to say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but it does go to show the huge impact that showbiz can have on consumer trends,” Whitney Cathcart, co-founder and chief commercial officer of 3DLOOK, told Yahoo. “Tom’s sharp tongue might have just earned Burberry some extra sales. After all, the majority of us do use the subway.”
“Honey and Spice” author Bolu Babalola tweeted that “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong told a London audience during a test screening that he asked members of the New York elite to pinpoint the “most offensive bag a woman could bring to something like this” to craft the scene.
“Succession” is set to conclude after its current fourth and final HBO season. Macfayden admitted to The Hollywood Reporter that playing Tom has been “great therapy” as he could be “excruciatingly embarrassing as Tom and not as Matthew,” himself.
“It started to feel like it was more definitive as we got closer to the end,” Macfayden said, “and I trust Jesse and his team to decide how to go out on a high. It would be awful to let it dribble on, you know?”
While wrapping the series was “sort of awful,” he teased that the finale is “a good ending. I think it works.”
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