That Jeremy StrongAs a method actor, he always tries to go a little further in his performance, which is not at all strange and in ‘Succession’ we have several examples of this. The last one is the well-known improvisation that he performed in the final scene of his character in the HBO series.
As we reported a few days ago, Strong commented on how in one of the shots he decided to go one step further and jump over the railing, thus showing Kendall’s intention to jump into the water. A moment that made the entire team’s hair stand on end, including the creator Jesse Armstrong.
“Lacks Freedom”
In a recent interview for NPR, the creator, writer and producer of ‘Succession’ admits that Strong’s improvisation caught them so unprepared that all the alerts went off to safeguard the safety of the actor:
Yes, we were there, in the biting cold and I am there every day. And certainly for this important scene. I was terrified. I was terrified that he might fall and hurt himself. It didn’t look like it was going to jump. But once that barrier was jumped, when you record, there are usually all kinds of health and safety assessments made and that was not our plan that day. Normally I know that if we had thought about it, we could have had boats and divers and all kinds of security measures, which we didn’t. So my first thought was towards the physical safety of him as a human being, nothing about the character. That’s what I felt that day. Holy God.”
Armstrong also gives his own interpretation of Kendall Roy’s ending after his failed bid on the Waystar RoyCo board of directors. For the scriptwriter that last scene he didn’t have that component of the character contemplating the end of his life basically because he is aware that he does not have that freedom.
“I think for me, Kendall, in the end, one of the things that she lacks is even the freedom to determine her own course in life. The name and wealth around it obviously seems extraordinarily lucky to many of us, and it is. But I think there’s a certain kind of tragedy to the real name, to a big business name, to a Disney or a Windsor or any of those kinds of names and he can’t ever, ever run away from it. And one of the ways he can’t run away is by having a protective bubble around him… of money and human series. In this case, he’s got his father’s bodyguard right there with him. So even if he’s looking at it, I don’t think it could ever happen to him. And yet, to me, it’s not how history happens for this kind of person.”
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