‘Succession’: Jeremy Strong “Terrified” Jesse Armstrong With This Improvised Stunt

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It doesn’t matter if you were about to inherit one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world and failed to do so, stunts should always be rehearsed by a production team before being filmed. Succession creator Jesse Armstrong told Variety he was terrified when Jeremy Strong improvised a take where Kendall climbed over the railing during the final moments of the series. The problem with that is, since the scene wasn’t rehearsed, there weren’t safety precautions put into place in case Strong fell into the river, turning the making of the final season into a complicated endeavor. “I was terrified,” Armstrong said, “I was terrified that he might fall in and be injured.” He went on to explain:

“He didn’t look like he was going to jump in. But once he climbed over that barrier, when you film, there are generally a lot of health and safety assessments made, and that was not our plan that day. If we’d even been thinking of that happening, we would have had boats and frogmen and all kinds of safety measures, which we didn’t have, so my first thought was for his physical safety as a human being, not anything about the character. That’s what I felt on the day. Good Lord, above.”

By the end of the episode, Kendall was left in a dark place after Shiv (Sarah Snook) refused to vote for him to lead Waystar Royco. Instead, she publicly showed her support for Lukas Matsson’s (Alexander Skarsgård) hostile takeover of the company. Shiv’s vote gave Matsson the advantage and, in the end, the media conglomerate ended up going to him after a brutal executive battle. Realizing what had been promised to him ever since he was a kid was now out of his grasp, Kendall took a walk that would eventually lead him to the edge of the river in Battery Park.

That’s not even taking into account how the other major player in the Roy succession drama, Roman (Kieran Culkin) also wanted his piece of the pie. But what made this character different from the others, besides his unconventional relationship with Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) was that, by the end of the story, he gained enough self-awareness to realize that none of his siblings deserved to sit on the throne due to their lack of seriousness. Even after all these years of fighting, it was never meant to be a Roy child sitting inside of that massive skyscraper.

RELATED: ‘Succession’ Finale: This Was Always Going to Be Kendall’s Downfall

The Roys Were Never Serious People

Before his untimely death, Logan Roy (Brian Cox) made sure to let his children know that he didn’t really have faith in any of them to take over his company. Even if he loved them in his twisted way, Logan recognized that none of them wanted the position of Chief Executive Officer for their love of the industry. It was never about their father’s legacy, it was about feeding their egos with a position of immense power, where they could control the narrative that would define the future of the country.

All episodes of Succession are now available on Max. You can check out our previous interview with Kieran Culkin below: