Succession Director On Series Finale, Jesse Armstrong’s Genius

Jul 24, 2023

Editor's note: These interview was done outside of the FYC event as there was no cast or creatives panel as a part of the event.

"It was a really lovely collective feeling of really being pushed and pushing ourselves," says director Mark Mylod of the magic behind the scenes on the now concluded Succession. "For me, keeping a cold clinical eye and staying with the truth became even more important, the Emmy winner added, speaking as part of Deadline's FYC House + HBO Max event series.

With the acclaimed Jesse Armstrong created satire having wrapped up its 10-episode fourth and final season on May 28, the death of media mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and the wretched battle for the crown by siblings Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong), Siobhan "Shiv" Roy (Sarah Snook), and Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) still lingers as a fresh fratricide.

A key part of the Succession team since Season 1, Royale Family, Shameless and Game of Thrones vet Mylod was behind the camera to bring the HBO series to its end, as he has been for every season finale. From that perch, having directed 16 of Succession's 39 episodes, Mylod has seen the show and its audience's evolution. Among the many aspects of our conversation, executive producer Mylod reveals when he learned of the almost inevitable path to the now debased CEO chair for Shiv's sometimes estranged husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen).

DEADLINE: Now that Succession is over and done, why do you think it worked so well?

MYLOD: Jesse's passion has such for American politics and American power dynamics that the sheer wealth of his knowledge and his passion for that subject puts him in a unique spot to actually be the best person I think to tell this story.

At the heart of it, you have to have a character an entity that represents an incredibly strong dark star. And that's the brilliance of Brian. He has because of all that, just because it's in his very nature, and his skill as an actor. He has that incredible credible presence. That was the whole dynamic of the show to work. If we didn't have that gravitational force, it just wouldn't work.

DEADLINE: In that context, what do you think you brought to the mix?

MYLOD: I’m not an intellectual in the way that Jesse is. Any smarts that I have tends to be emotional intelligence. So, in terms of the tone of the show and the visual landscape, I come to it from a completely different place.

My attraction to doing the show, apart from this feeling of this kind of brutal Zeitgeist that I thought it inhabited, was a sense of actually. These are really interesting characters to try and unmask. To find that vulnerability, to find the child, and then to actually find a way to connect to these people. I found that a brilliant directorial challenge, and it was just gorgeous to have the opportunity of four seasons to really explore and connect and get under the skin of those characters — to, if not forgive them, at least give them context for their behavior.

DEADLINE: You directed every Succession season finale, and every season opener except the first one, as well as several episodes over the show's run. Besides Adam McKay, who directed the pilot, the visual style of Succession was crafted in great part by your work, so how do you feel now it has ended?

MYLOD: Now that it's done, I feel genuinely sad, sad and proud, which is an odd cocktail.

It's a few months since we finished shooting and we’ve only recently finished post, but I’ve never found it so difficult to be apart from a particular group of people. Apart from family really, obviously. But those actors, that crew it was special. It really was. It was perhaps a once in a lifetime alchemy between us all, and I’m really proud of that, and I really missed them.

DEADLINE: Let's talk about the series finale, "With Open Eyes," which Jesse penned. There were obviously a lot of threads to tie up, getting Tom installed as CEO, which seems so clear now, and effectively leaving so much unsaid, as Succession has done so well over the years. With the hindsight of time, the hype and the reaction that the finale received, how do you see that conclusion now?

MYLOD: I’m very proud of the finale. I think it's a lovely thing.

It works because it did what I think we’ve done well in the past, and that is to deliver. What in retrospect seems like an absolutely obvious ending, the only ending that ultimately there could be the truthful ending. But we disguised that up until the last second. I think it worked because we stayed true to our creed, and we stayed true to what I think is the absolute emotional truth of what those characters would do and what would happen to those characters.

DEADLINE: How do you mean?

MYLOD: That they would not be able to escape that gravity of Logan, that they would be self-sabotaging on some level. So, we’re just being honest. In terms of the actual specifics of how the season finale would end, I didn't know until I think the beginning of Season 4 that Tom would be CEO by the end of the run. I knew that the siblings would lose, but from a long way back I didn't I didn't seek out the information. I didn't ask.

DEADLINE: Why?

MYLOD: Because it's as Aaron Sorkin used to say about West Wing, and I know this because I used to ask John Wells on Shameless. Wells said the Aaron Sorkin was always worried about giving scenes to actors too early because he would be worried that they would play in the future

That an unconscious foreknowledge would actually manifest itself within a scene. I have that fear myself if I have foreknowledge, I’m worried about unconsciously, somehow kind of tipping a wink to the audience. So, I avoid that temptation by not knowing that which I do not need to know.

DEADLINE: Funny you bring up Sorkin, because of course Succession had such a sharp and some would say, prophetic, political edge to it. There was a lot of good timing involved …

MYLOD: I know others have said this, but the fact is the first day of shooting of the original pilot was the day that Trump won the 2016 election. So, there is an obvious correlation to right wing media and the power dynamics of these kinds of super families. So, but I think there's something else beyond that. It's beyond the timing element of it, and that is perhaps just in the f*ck-up act, you know, through some very high-class sense, like a soap…DEADLINE: Hey, no need to pause, sir. I’m a lover of pop music and high-class soap. So definitely, there's no shame in admitting a Dynasty in your heritage. MYLOD: Exactly. There's Dynasty and there's Dallas and they were great fun, but they didn't go quite as dark as Succession did. We know in this age that there is an appetite for feuding families. Game of Thrones did it on an epic scale, but also managed at its best to be incredibly intimate as well. And this was another way of exploring family dynamics, and power dynamics in a really with a with a fresh and timely landscape.

DEADLINE: One of the most conspicuous and simultaneously subtle elements of Succession was the production design, which aimed for an accurate depiction of the billionaire class, often in the smallest of gestures and symbols. How did you work to not let that overwhelm the story, as often occurs?

MYLOD: It was a balance between showing that world as accurately as budget would allow, whilst not fetishizing it. It was a question of objectivity without being seduced by it.

There's a very simple device I use, which is the kinetic movement of actors to reveal a landscape, to reveal that world. So, the character will always lead us through it, so the camera is in a very reductive way. The camera never slavishly explores or salivate over, over a beautiful place or a gorgeous watch — I’ll find a way to stage it so that I get to see and reflect that world, but without hopefully being that hypocrite who actually says oh, look at these terrible people, but wow, look at that gorgeous Rolex.

DEADLINE: Sounds like Succession in one shot…

MYLOD: (Laughs) I think Jeremy put it very well when he said in a conversation that all of us felt that we were stretched by our ambitions and by the challenge of the writing to places that we didn't know we could achieve. It was a really lovely collective feeling of really being pushed and pushing ourselves For me, keeping a cold clinical eye and staying with the truth became even more important.

DEADLINE: The last shots of the siblings in the series finale were silent codas unto themselves …

MYLOD: Tom and Shiv in the car was a gift.

DEADLINE: How?

MYLOD: I staged it in a way that they could go from darkness into light as a kind of irony. With that final drive away into Manhattan. I feel that Shiv is still in the game as a kind of Lady Macbeth, starting to pull the strings potentially behind Tom.

DEADLINE: And Roman in the bar?

With Kieran's character Roman, I feel the tragedy of him stuck in that bar somewhere forever. Yes, it's better to be rich than, at least in terms of human survival, but there's something tragic about him. There's a way of looking at that where the past two years that we spent with the character with just a fever dream. He went into that bar. Imagine that he had this whole two years of happening between his father's birthdays and now he's back in that bar and nothing has changed. There's kind of a happiness and a tragedy simultaneously hence, they’re beautifully ambiguous.

DEADLINE: Jeremy Strong has spoken out about there being an unused shot at the end of the series. The show leaves him staring out into the water, his motif in many ways, a broken fool. But Jeremy says there was also a shot of him going over the fence into the water, a suicide attempt…

MYLOD: I understand totally why Jeremy made that choice to move towards the fence. I think the character is thinking about and contemplating that and whether he actually goes through with that is, is another question. Jesse and I felt that perhaps leaving the character in the Purgatory of between those top cold places, the freezing waters of the New York Harbor, or the cold horror of the future with an unfulfilled Destiny just puts them in such a place of nowhere between those two, two or four places. That that felt like the cruelest and probably the most honest way we could leave that character. It sounds very full circle.DEADLINE: Sounds like Succession in a bottle… MYLOD: Yes, I mean, that's the central tragedy of the show, isn't it? Everything comes full circle, and those characters can never escape.

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