SPOILER ALERT: This interview discusses gargantuan plot developments in Connors Wedding, Season 4, Episode 3 of Succession, now streaming on HBO Max.
Many devotees of Succession assumed that sometime during its final season, the shows patriarch Logan Roy a businessman of unparalleled brilliance, and a churlish father, who loves his children (despite all evidence to the contrary) would die. After all, Logan, played by Brian Cox, had a stroke in the 2018 series premiere of HBOs Emmy-winning drama, and his ill-health has been an ongoing concern.
But Logan dying in Episode 3?! A total shock to Succession nation.
Connors Wedding, written by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, and directed by executive producer Mark Mylod, has two main settings: a boat on which Connor Roy (Alan Ruck) and his siblings Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) are gathered, and the Waystar Royco plane, where Logan is flying with his executive team to Sweden, in order to try to salvage the GoJo deal.
Courtesy of David M. Russell/HBO As can happen with sudden tragedies during the age of cellphones, the news of whats happened on the plane where Logan has collapsed, and is receiving (likely futile) treatment travels to the boat in a staccato, deficient and maddening manner, with Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), Shivs estranged husband, serving as the medical events ill-equipped messenger.
Connors Wedding is simultaneously propulsive, with a real-time vibe, and heartbreakingly emotional as Logans kids veer wildly through their grief.
The day after the episode aired, Mylod spoke with Variety about directing Connors Wedding. He revealed that Logans death had been in the works since before the shows third season, how he filmed the boat scenes in which the Roys are dealing with the tsunami that is Logans death, that unscripted hug among the siblings and what the episodes final image nearly was.
When did Jesse Armstrong first tell you that Logan would be dying this season?
It was way back when we were doing Season 3 I think we were in pre-production for Season 3. Thats when he first told me about this idea,that it should happen early in the season in an episode slot that you would not necessarily expect, and this idea of actually creating, hopefully, great drama out of mundanity you know, the inconvenience of it all. Which just seemed wonderful to me.
We went to HBO, and chatted with Casey [Bloys] and Francesca [Orsi] and Nora [Skinner] and the gang there and they were incredibly supportive.
But there was a lot of trepidation. Brian is an incredible actor, and this is an incrediblypowerful character in modern television drama. Not to over-aggrandize ourselves, but hes got a lot of heft. So its a huge and scary choice to actually kill off that character.
Was it always going to be that he died off camera? Was there ever a scenario in which we would have seen it, or at least the lead up to it?
Im sure when Jesse was imagining it, he went through a number of scenarios. But once it landed on this idea ofthe inconvenience of it the lack of drama, if you like it just felt so real. With a sudden death in the modern age, its a phone call or a text, or even an email. Itisnt a Shakespearean death scene.
In terms of the structure of how wehandle and tell the story of this huge characters death, it just seems so interesting and fresh to focus on the frustration of trying to get the information. Our story revolves around a media empire; it revolves around information and eyeballs. And this idea of the irony ofnotbeing able to get that information,apart from the wonderful device of putting the audience somewhat into the heads of the characters and their frustration of: Is this really happening? Whats happening, whats happening?
Courtesy of HBO Given all of that, how did you decide what your overall visual approach would be, with the kids at Connors wedding, and the other characters on the plane?
With the treatment of the siblings on the boat,it seemed very apparent to me very quickly immediately, really on reading that, that the camera needed to be a sadist. That it needed to stick the lens right in those poor peoples faces. In the worst kind of paparazzi style of, find the people that are in the most pain, and stick a lens right in their face. And dont take it away try to keep it there as long as possible, to be as unflinching as possible. It felt really cruel. But it also felt like exactly the right thing to do.
And thats what we tried to do. We tried once theyve got the news, and theyre trying to seek clarity and information on it to keep the cameras right in their faces as much as possible, for as long as possible. The challenge there was really that we shoot on 35mm film, and therefore it runs out after 10 minutes. We shoot with two cameras. And after shooting in those chunks through those moments, there was a whole half-hour chunk of real-time story, from the moment that the characters first go upstairs and the call comes in from Tom, through to Kendall going outside and talking to Frank, where it felt like it had to be literally real-time.
Wow, OK.
So I talked to the cast and the crew about, Is there a way we can do this? Can we do a half-hour unbroken take? And thats what we did. The actors were up for it. The camera team were brilliant, in that we basically hid camera magazines all over the place, and a third camera body tucked behind the door, so that at least one camera could be running all the time, whilst the other camera was literally running to do a super-fast reload, and start shooting again.
We ended up with this extraordinary ballet between the cast and the camera crew, as the cast just kept going, kept going, kept going, kept going over this half-hour period, whilst the crew were dancing around them to cover it. And the results were well, you see the results, if youve seen the episode. There is an intensity to it. And a huge chunk of that take is what made the final cut.
That was the approach on the boat, which was a section we shot first, over a week or so. And then in shooting on the plane, the idea initially was that we would see very little very, very little of Tomduring that initial section, before we get into the post-compressions forensic element.But Matthew was so damn compelling that we ended up actuallyhaving a fantastic dilemma in the edit, trying to get the balance right in the intercut between the two locations. We ended up using a lot more of Matthew on camera than we originally intended. That was a happy dilemma.
Wait, so Matthew was always going to be on the phone with them. But you didnt realize how much of him youd be showing?
Exactly right, yes. Ithad been written with this idea that we would always hear Matthews voice. And when we were shooting on the boat, Matthew was always there on the phone. He was actually in London at the time the poor man was with us until two oclock in the morning sometimes.Thats his voice, obviously, live coming out of the phone in the moment.
And when we get onto the plane, the rest of the cast, the other siblings, were there off-camera for him to give him the kind of quid pro quo back. Thats our creed that theyll be there to support each other. But yeah, we ended up using a lot more of him actually, on camera than we originally expected.
The other odd, unexpected dilemma, just in photographic grammar, was how much or how little to show of Brians character, of Logan, prostrate. Instinctively, it felt oddly disrespectful. And I wasnt sure if that was just me being queasy, or whether it was right to fight against that instinct. It became a point of discussion, chatting to Jesse about it, and he felt exactly the same as I did. When both of us agree, I feel that theres probably a decent consensus there.
So we moved forward with that, and we just showed Brians face, or Logans face, just the one time in what I hope is quite a poignant scene of the phone being up against his ear, and the hopelessness of Shiv trying to trying to reach him, trying to talk to him, whilst the heart compressions continue.
Courtesy of HBO What were the logistics of that? Was it a dummy, or a double? Was it Brian?
I didnt want to ask Brian. Its already incredibly emotional for Brian, rather than to ask him to lie down and play dead for a couple of weeks, or a few days. I didnt ask him to do that. Getting into the real machinations of it, 90% of the time, it was a stunt double down there. We needed a stunt double, because we had to, obviously, have all these heart compressions, so we needed somebody who could handle having their chest compressed pretty much all day. And it was brilliant stunt performer who helped us with that. Sometimes the camera would skim over his torso a little.
That one shot where you see of Brian laying on the floor, whilst the heart compressions continue, is actually a composite shot. Its actually the stunt doublestorso, because I wanted the compressions to continue safely, and Brians head. We stuck them together in post, and then put some rhythmic action onto Brians head to match it.
Brians obviously in a few scenes at the beginning of the episode. How was he feeling shooting those final scenes, and what was that like?
How he felt is obviously up to him to express.For all of us, it was very sad. Particularly the reality check when we came to do the table read forhis last episode, where were all gathered together, and we read the scene through in real time. Thats when it really hit us that this would be the last table read that we had with him. And then, it was the last scene that we would do with him.
Luckily, wed already put into motionan idea: that in order to try to preserve the secret of this episode, that Brian would be around for subsequent episodes. And would even appear in a much later episode, so that we would see him down the line, and hopefully try to head off rumors that the character had died. So he was always around.
But in terms of being on set and actually playing Logan yeah, we were just really sad. And Im damn sure Brian was too.
Is that a flashback episode in a future episode?
No, not a flashback. No, the stuff in a subsequent episode, we basically bring him on to shoot dummy scenes scenes that didnt actually exist.As a misdirect.
Courtesy of HBO Oh, I see! With the plane,was that a set that you were filming on?
Yeah, it became apparent after Season 1, that we were going to be spending quite a lot of time on the main Waystar jet. Financially, it was a smart thing to do to build the fuselage in a soundstage. So thats what we did.
It feels so claustrophobic that whole time, when usually, it feels pretty luxurious. With an emergency happening, less so. What were the challenges of that?
It soundsoddly macabre, but I really enjoyed it. Because both with the airplane shoot and on the boat, there was such a closeness to our company. If ever we felt like an old theater rep company, it was then. We all knew we were shooting the last season anyway, so there was such a closeness to all the castthat I really felt that throughout the process. There was a real happiness to that, oddly.
In terms of shooting, of structuring the airplane stuff, the first thing to do was to get the mise-en-scne correct, and that meant researching exactly what the process would be if somebody on a private jet had a heart attack or had heart failure what would they do? And so we spoke to various consultants, and had a demonstration as to how to use a defibrillator, etc. You fall back on reality at every time, and authenticity. It just falls into authenticity. And thats always been our kind of obsession.
How long did you have to film the episode?
No longer than a standard episode: I think it was maybe 12 or 13 days. Technically, it wasnt a hard episode. The slight contradiction is on the one hand, were shooting big chunks, because I wanted this flow of performance, so were shooting a lot of pages in one day. On the other hand, we have to shoot a lot of those pages twice in we have to shoot pages 10 through 40 on the boat,and then we have to shoot pages 10 through 40 on the plane for the other side.
Courtesy of HBO Succession isnt often a tearjerker.But this episode was so emotional I cried so much! Were you feeling that when you were directing it?
Oh, goodness, yes. The first time with Sarah on the call to her dad, Jesse and I were in bits after that first take. Really, she just nailed it in a way that only Sarah can. That was extraordinary.
And again, when we went up to the airport in Westchesterto shootthe three siblings doing the press call:That lovely unscripted, three-way hug between them, which I thought was really beautiful, they just fell into.
Oh! That wasnt in the script?
No. They just fell into each other there, which was just gorgeous.And then the separation of the three characters, Sarah going that way, and Shiv wanting or needing the support of Tom in that moment, despite everything. Roman feeling the need to go on to the plane to see his fathers body, and leaving Kendall alone there I found that tremendously poignant. That was an incredibly busy day shooting.But it was a very, very emotional for all of us.
How did you decide what the final shot would be? That it would be on Kendall, with Jeremy Strong reacting as Logans body comes off the plane.
It was scripted that way, which sometimes makes it easy, sometimes doesnt, as in the case of the Season 3 finale where we couldnt quite find it, and so we had to improvise beyond that to find it. In this case, as always, we shot quite a way beyond that, because I just never say cut unless the films rolled out. That was the scripted moments of him watching as the body came down,almost verbatim. Butbecause they were in the moment, Jeremys character,in some takes, really fell apart emotionally, in some takes was more stoic. We chose a more stoic take.It just felt right with the balance.
But he walked over to his car, to his driver, as Roman was coming back from the aircraft, and shared a look before the two of them got into their respective cars, and the cars drove away. As the cars drove away, the camera just landed on the ambulance, which then drove away. And all the vehicles kind of oddly, like the end of Oceans 11 all the players exited the stage, to leave us just with this blank runway. Which was very powerful.
But ultimately, the more personal close-up of Jeremys lovely performance there, with the moon rising behind him, that just felt like the moment to cut to black.
HBO tells me that you directed four episodes the season. Mark, whats it been like for you to say goodbye to Succession?
Oh really, very, very, very, very emotional. I stayed with Game of Thrones for three seasons, Shameless for three, Entourage for three Im a commitment addict. I tend to stick around with these characters, and saying goodbye to this after four seasonswasreallyhard. The last couple of weeks,the way the ambush kind of randomly hijacks you, when youre not expecting it.
There was one day towards the end of the season when I just could barely operate. I was just so damn sad and shocked. And Im still getting to grips with it. Luckily, Ive got the comfort of post-productionto keep me going. But really, unbelievably sad.
This interview has been edited and condensed.