The two stars, known for their roles in Lionsgate‘s original Hunger Games films, will appear in the forthcoming prequel movie The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Lionsgate releases the new feature in theaters Nov. 20, 2026.
Lawrence will reprise her role as Katniss Everdeen, while Hutcherson will return as Peeta Mellark, with the pair likely appearing in a flash-forward. No details have been disclosed.
The book Sunrise on the Reaping takes place in Panem on the morning of the reaping for the 50th Hunger Games, 24 years before the events in The Hunger Games, the first novel that published in 2008. The franchise’s first five movies have surpassed $3.3 billion at the worldwide box office, with the initial four films led by Lawrence as Katniss, Hutcherson as Peeta, and Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne. The film series kicked off with 2012’s The Hunger Games.
Lawrence and Hutcherson’s most recent entry in the franchise was 2015’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2, which ended with the pair married with children. Lawrence earned a Golden Globe Award nomination this week for her role in Die My Love, while Hutcherson currently stars in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.
Francis Lawrence helms the new movie from a script by Billy Ray that adapts Collins’ book. Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson produce for Color Force, while Cameron MacConomy executive produces.
Sunrise on the Reaping is a sequel to 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, which starred Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth and Hunter Schafer.
Lionsgate did not respond for comment.
The InSneiderwas first to report on Lawrence and Hutcherson being involved.
When Kieran Culkin wished for a third child in his Oscar speech this year, his wife Jazz Charton was listening: the couple is expecting!
THR reports the 42-year-old actor and his 37-year-old wife made it official at the opening night of “Waiting for Godot” on Broadway Sunday, where Kieran placed his hand on Jazz’s baby bump.
Their family already includes their 6-year-old daughter and their 4-year-old son.
While picking up his first Oscar, for the film “A Real Pain,” Culkin famously said during his acceptance speech, “My beautiful wife, Jazz, thank you for sharing your life with me and giving me two amazing kids, Kinsey Sioux and Wilder Wolf, I love you so many and so much. And Jazz: I want more. You said maybe if I win.”
He clarified backstage that night, “A couple of months ago, I’d been asking for a while, and my wife, Jazz, said, ‘Maybe if you win the Emmy.’ And I didn’t bring it up for months, and then when I won the Globe, I said, ‘Remember what you said?’ She said, ‘What? I don’t remember,’ and then I told her and it all came back to her. So she spent the whole week being nervous, and instead of talking to her in private like a human, I just blasted her onstage, which was very rude. Anyway, that’s the whole story. The end.”
Kieran has said he actually wants not just one more baby, but two.
While another creative name for baby no. 3 seems likely, he has already ruled out naming any future children after his high-strung “Succession” character, Roman.
Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in A Real PainCourtesy of Searchlight Pictures
The Jewish tradition of placing stones on the grave markers of the deceased as a form of respect and remembrance becomes a central animating force in A Real Pain, the new film written, directed and starring Jesse Eisenberg. While visiting Poland with a Holocaust tour group, cousins David and Benji (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, respectively) place stones on one of the markers at the country’s oldest gravesites; they try it again at the front entrance of the home where their beloved grandmother grew up, until they are alerted in brusque Polish by a concerned neighbor that an old woman actually lives there now and is likely to trip over the stone and break her neck.
A REAL PAIN ★★★★(4/4 stars) Directed by:Jesse Eisenberg Written by: Jesse Eisenberg Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan Running time: 90 mins.
Eisenberg’s remarkable film—which won Eisenberg the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance earlier this year—is like that mislaid second marker: heartfelt, awkward, full of pain it’s desperate to do something with, and laced with an all-too-necessary mordant humor. It at once recalls the works of Woody Allen, Alexander Payne and, most notably, the comedy of Adam Sandler (Culkin’s live-wire Benji’s too-muchness is an outcome of his outsized anger and vulnerability). But Eisenberg, in his second writer-director effort following 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World, has somehow created an of the moment tragicomedy in a style identifiably his own.
Or to put an even finer point: it is identifiably himself.
The lead characters—the highly-medicated worrywart seller of internet pop-up ads played by Eisenberg and the stoner charm-monster disrupting everything in the search for something genuine embodied with ruthless abandon by Culkin—are like the filmmaker split in two. Watching these two actors bounce off of and grate on each other as they navigate well-appointed hotel rooms, air-conditioned train rides and finally, in absolute silence, the Majdanek concentration camp, is like witnessing a Socratic dialogue if Plato had spent a few seasons writing for SNL.
Jennifer Gray in A Real PainAgata Grzybowska/Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Filmmaker and actor Will Sharpe delivers a deftly attenuated performance as the well-meaning tour guide with the impossible task of respecting the enormity of what they are there to see while keeping the mood light enough to not be crushing. Like a lost crush from a Catskill’s summer many moons ago, Jennifer Grey turns up on the bus as a recently divorced Los Angelino looking for meaning in her life. Kurt Egyiawan, a child soldier in Cary Joji Fukunaga’s 2015 war film Beasts of No Nation, plays a Rwanda genocide survivor who turned to Judaism as a way to connect with and process his own trauma.
Eisenberg seems incapable of an inauthentic moment, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that nearly everything he does as an actor, writer and now director confronts the sheer impossibility of achieving anything approaching authenticity. But his deftest act as a filmmaker may be simply handing the ball off to Culkin and clearing a hole so he can run with it. Like a one-winged bird forever trying to escape a cage of its own construction, the Emmy-winning Succession star thrashes, soars and crashes with a breathtaking transparency.
Admittedly, A Real Pain is an acquired taste; like a top-flight IPA, it is at once overly aggressive and serenely balanced. As a director, Eisenberg holds a preternatural understanding of when to exhale when it all gets to be too much, whether it’s Benji’s antics, David’s brittleness or the enormity of the Holocaust.
Like several of the year’s very best films—including Brady Corbet’s epic The Brutalist and Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, a recreation of howABC Sports covered the Israeli hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics—A Real Pain demonstrates how we can and must reconcile with the forever festering wounds of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people in dynamic ways and with distinct styles. It has never been a more crucial time to listen to and engage with those stories.
I’m waiting for Kieran Culkin at the tip of the Greenpoint ferry platform, where he’s suggested we meet on a Friday morning to get on the boat, take it a few stops to Dumbo, then walk across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan — a sort of hung-over New Yorker’s triathlon. He’s late and sending me self-effacing riffs about it: “I was just about to text you to see if you were also running late or if you were the kind of person that was professional and an actual adult, unlike myself.” The ferry pulls into the dock at the exact moment that I spot him on the horizon. He is instantly recognizable, clad in all black and wearing a pair of sunglasses, eyebrows perma-arched, hair like an inverted comma, walking with distinct hustle but not running. The boat starts boarding right as he reaches me, a little out of breath and visibly relieved that he pulled it off. “This is what I do,” he says. “I pull up to airports, I don’t even know what airline I’m flying. Sometimes I don’t know what city I’m going to. I still get on the plane and everything’s fine.”
As we line up to show our tickets, Culkin, a lifelong New Yorker who rode the subway around the city alone by 13 and who contains all of the ungovernability and bullshit-detecting that this implies, digresses into a spontaneous but deeply felt spiel about the ferry’s flawed digital ticketing system (“The physical ticket, I can just put it in my pocket. I just have to get here early enough to go to the kiosk and fucking do it. But I’m lazy. And now I’m bitching about how lazy I am”). I will soon learn that this is his greatest talent, second only to his ability to wring humor, poignancy, and a sense of total reality from the dozens of onscreen characters he’s been playing since early childhood. Later, he will joyfully go full Larry David on everything from coffee-lid sizes to the concept of wearing shorts (“It’s a weird garment”).
Culkin, 42, has made his career portraying boys, teenagers, and now adult men not unlike himself: hyperverbose and stubborn, skin-of-their-teeth charming, effortlessly funny, irascible and self-lacerating. He’s mastered the art of playing people who think they’ve mastered the art of the carefree, loutish façade but whose pathos and pain glisten through the cracks. He uncovered that instinct as a part of the brief but powerful Culkin Child-Actor Dynasty in blazingly earnest ’90s films like The Mighty and The Cider House Rules and Father of the Bride, sharpened it as a teen in artier fare like Igby Goes Down and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, and most recently and famously perfected it on HBO’s Succession as sad perverted clown Roman Roy.
He’ll next star in the film A Real Pain, a dramedy about a pair of cousins who embark on a Holocaust tour of Poland in memory of their late grandmother. Culkin is at the apex of his idiosyncratic powers as the magnetic charmer Benji, whose easy banter with his fellow tourgoers gives way to increasingly volatile moods that reveal a tormented core. Jesse Eisenberg — who wrote, directed, and stars opposite Culkin — is the ostensible protagonist David, Benji’s uptight, socially awkward cousin who envies and pities him in equal measure, but A Real Pain is Culkin’s showcase. Eisenberg remembers being consistently astonished by Culkin’s ability to show up on set with no idea which scene they were filming that day, scan his lines, then casually deliver “the greatest acting I’ve ever seen in my life.” Its Sundance and Telluride premieres received glowing reviews praising Culkin’s performance specifically, entering him into the Best Supporting Actor Oscar conversation.
And Culkin nearly dropped out of the film. He’s notoriously picky about taking jobs; he turned several of them down in the years after 2002’s Igby, unsure if he wanted what he saw as a fun childhood hobby to be a proper career. “Things were coming,” he recalls of that time, like movies written specifically for him, and “I freaked out, ran away.” He eventually got comfortable taking on more parts, only saying “yes” when he really connected with something — which is exactly what happened when he read the script for A Real Pain while filming Succession’s final season in 2022.
“It was one of the very, very, very rare scripts that I laughed out loud reading,” he says as we disembark and begin our trek toward the bridge, both sweating in the early-September sun as he curses himself for coming up with this activity and then showing up for it in an entirely black outfit. “It was that rare thing of, Oh, I know who this character is and I know how to do it.” Specifically, he recognized Benji as a near-perfect doppelgänger of someone unnamed whom he knows in real life as well as in a sort of a quantum-multiverse, Sliding Doors version of himself. “I’m one quick little misstep away from being that person,” he says, and he credits his decision to stop smoking weed in his 20s as one of the things that saved him from a lonely, depressive, Benji-esque fate. He took the role after the Real Pain producers told him the film wasn’t shooting for another year. “I’m like, ‘Oh, a year? That’s not real life.’ Then that year was up. And I had a panic.”
Culkin is a consummate wife guy who brings up his spouse of 11 and a half years, Jazz Charton, dozens of times unprompted and tells me his ideal job would be a stay-at-home dad. “Some people say that but don’t really mean it,” he says, knowing how the whole thing sounds. “And some definitely just couldn’t do that.” So he was particularly stressed by the idea of being separated from Charton and their two kids. He learned while making Succession that eight days is the maximum he can be away from them without plunging into dissociative despair. “I don’t know who I am without them,” he says. As we exited the ferry, Culkin instinctively reached to grab a stroller from the storage area. “Where are my fucking kids?!” he joked.
He tried to pull out of A Real Pain just before production began and ended up on the phone with Emma Stone, his onetime girlfriend and a producer of the film. “She did an almost reverse-psychology thing on me,” he says, laughing. “She was like, ‘Oh, I totally get that. If I were you, I’d probably feel that way.’ And I was like, ‘But have they started?’ She goes, ‘Oh, yeah. They’re actually already in Poland scouting locations; people are hired.’ I was like, ‘It’s not like people would be out of a job?’ She’s like, ‘No, no, they would, but it’s not on you. You said ‘yes,’ but if you have your reasons for not doing it, you’re not responsible for these people’s jobs. It’s fine; you do whatever you want.’ And I got off the phone and I went, ‘Ah.’ ” Stone laughs recalling the conversation. “I can’t believe he talked about it publicly,” she says. “Producing, I’ve realized now, is like parenting — every kid needs different things.” Stone got on the plane with Culkin, his wife, and their kids to make sure he made the journey. “I was so grateful that he did it, but, also, thank fucking God. Because it would’ve been catastrophic,” she says.His family was able to join him for a good chunk of the shoot but not all. When I ask how he pushed through the 25 days without them, he deadpans, “Alcohol.”
Eisenberg didn’t learn about Culkin’s attempt to back out until after the film was finished. But when Culkin eventually told him, he was relatively nonplussed. “It was just another thing in a long line of, like, Who is this person?” Eisenberg says. He cast Culkin without ever having seen him perform in anything. The two had only met briefly — once on the set of Zombieland (where Culkin was visiting Stone) and once at an audition for Adventureland, which Culkin didn’t get but Eisenberg did, and where, Culkin tells me, he made the spontaneous artistic choice to pinch Eisenberg’s nipples through his shirt as part of the audition scene and forgot to remove his hands once the director called cut. When I bring this up to Eisenberg, he pauses thoughtfully. “I had forgotten about that. That’s right,” he says. “We’ve never discussed it. I think he squeezed my breasts.” While the breast-squeezing left no lasting impression, what did was Culkin’s “magic trick” ability to project both lightness and darkness simultaneously and in equal measure. He “exhibits real quickness, but there’s also a kind of real-world heaviness to him,” Eisenberg says.
Culkin isn’t Jewish, which was a major discussion, Eisenberg says: “I have 17,000 thoughts about this, and where I come out is he gave me an amazing gift by helping to tell this story that is very personal for my family.” As Benji, Culkin is as enchanting as he is impulsive and infuriating, casually befriending other people on the tour to the astonished envy of David then later berating their sweet guide for his “constant barrage of stats.” In a vivid moment roughly midway through the film, he publicly melts down about the cognitive dissonance of traveling first class on a Polish train on a Holocaust tour, embarrassing David and baffling his peers. David in particular can’t seem to understand why Benji is so consistently plagued by suffering. “You see how people love you? You see what happens when you walk into a room?” he goes on to ask him. “I would give anything to know what that feels like, man.”
With Jesse Eisenberg in A Real Pain. Photo: Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Unlike a lot of actors, who tend to try to distance themselves from their most widely known role in fear of being existentially stuck or typecast, Culkin constantly and happily steers our conversation back to Succession. The show was deeply meaningful to him — it was where he says he finally realized he wanted to be an actor. On a personal level, he was such a fan of the series that he almost always watched it with Charton as it aired each Sunday night, though he mostly avoided the internet discourse. “My wife would tell me certain things, like, ‘Oh, people are making fun of the way you sit.’ And she’ll show me on her phone. And I’m scrolling, like, ‘Oh, yeah, I sit weird in the show. I didn’t know that.’” He still hasn’t seen the final episode, in part because he was already in Poland filming A Real Pain when it aired. It’s been so long now that he and Charton are planning a rewatch going back to episode one. He admits he might also be avoiding the finale because then the whole thing will really be over. He still daydreams about a spontaneous fifth-season pickup: “There’s part of me that feels like, When are they going to call?” he says. “I think maybe the reason is because I didn’t get the closure of watching the last fucking episode.” Suddenly, we are confronted by the half-naked body of his Succession co-star Alexander Skarsgård hovering above us on a gigantic billboard. Culkin stops talking and looks up at him, beaming with pride. “Well!” he says. “There he is.”
While filming Succession, where he was encouraged to play around with his lines and his character, Culkin developed a sort of free-associative acting style, but he won’t go so far as to call it improv (“That has a certain feel to it”). Instead, he calls it blagging, British slang he picked up from his wife that loosely translates to “fake it till you make it.” He doesn’t like to talk too much about how he does this or try to analyze it; to look at it too hard might ruin the whole thing. “It’s written, and I understand the character, and then some shit comes out sometimes; that’s it. And I don’t force it,” he says.
The not-improv improv of it all caused an initial clash between Eisenberg and Culkin on the set of A Real Pain. Eisenberg is a type-A planner and had each scene carefully blocked and plotted out. Culkin felt stifled by the relative formality. “It felt a little bit like going backward,” he says. “Jesse had set up shots before I got there to be like, ‘You’re going to stand here.’ And I’m like, ‘How do you know?’ He goes, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ I’m like, ‘Well, we haven’t tried it yet is all I’m saying.’ I tried to go along with him those first couple of days, and it felt like, Why am I hired?” Eisenberg remembers changing his mind after filming a specific scene in which he asked Culkin to run up to co-star Jennifer Grey, who plays a tourgoer who bonds with Benji, and say whatever he wanted because they weren’t going to use the audio. “He was so free and funny that I didn’t mind throwing out the blueprints.”
Photo: Mark Seliger for New York Magazine
We’re in the East Village now, Culkin’s erstwhile neighborhood of 20-plus years, where he’s meeting up with Charton. He spots her from across the street and makes a loud birdcall to get her attention. Charton is disarming and funny, and the two are clearly enamored with each other, falling into natural repartee about their kids and each other. Charton lovingly mocks Culkin for being winded from our walk. “We went to our daughter’s school, and you’re only supposed to use the elevator for an emergency or if you have to, so we took the stairs and Kieran was out of breath at the second floor,” she says, laughing. Culkin picks up the story: “I made it to the third, and I took a break. She thought I was kidding.” Charton imitates Culkin: “‘I can feel my heart!’”
In January, Culkin got up onstage at the Emmys and informed the world that he’d like to have another baby, which Charton promised him she’d consider if he won. “She had no faith that I was going to,” he explains, shaking his head. “I didn’t have that forethought of like, What’s going to be the response to this?” It backfired somewhat. “I was very moved, No. 1,” Charton says. “And then I was very confused that he would bring up my uterus.” Culkin nods cheerfully, willing to accept notes. “That I was calling you out publicly,” he adds. “I mean, luckily he’s not super-famous or anything, but I got weird messages from friends and family about it,” Charton says. “I feel like my uterus is now public domain.” He is openly apologetic about the bad blag, and the possibility of another kid is still on the table.
Culkin’s next big project is Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway, opposite Bob Odenkirk and Bill Burr, in the spring. He agreed to do the play because he thought it would give him more time with his family. “Then I talked to friends who do theater and have young kids, and I was like, ‘Wait, is it good?’ They’re like, ‘No, you never see your kids. You’re working every night. You never do bath time, bedtime. You get one night a week,’ ” he says. Instead of trying to get out of it, he asked the producers to change the schedule so he could have Sundays off. To his surprise, they said “yes” and moved the show to Mondays. “I’ve never heard of the show going dark on a Sunday,” he says. “Now I get one day a week dedicated to just being a dad.”
That night, he and I meet up at a Gramercy steakhouse whose interior is emblazoned with a gigantic sign that reads “Beef and Liberty,” the sort of place that the Roman Roys of the world might conspicuously snort cocaine off a leather banquette and where, across the street, the entire Lohan family is dining outside. When I ask Culkin if he knows Lindsay, he corrects me on the pronunciation of her name (LO-uhn) and says he doesn’t ever recognize any famous people except for the anchors on NY1; recently, he says, he chatted up a very important higher-up at Disney without having any idea who he was. We order dirty martinis — “Very, very, very dry, barely any vermouth” — and Culkin deliberates for a very long time about which steak to choose, asking the waiter pointed questions about its provenance before landing on a huge bone-in so he can take the rest home for his family. But later, when he asks for a to-go box, he hands it all to me, insisting on giving me the leftovers because he wants me to make a steak soup that one of his brothers once cooked for him. He takes a deep breath and begins describing the recipe for it in passionate, exacting detail.
‘Succession’ stars Kieran Culkin, Nicholas Braun and Matthew Macfadyen share sweet reunion
Updated: 3:25 PM EST Feb 25, 2024
“Succession” stars Kieran Culkin, Nicholas Braun and Matthew Macfadyen shared a sweet reunion at the SAG Awards Saturday night. The trio were seen sharing a loving hug at the awards ceremony, before reuniting on stage to pick up the award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.Co-stars Alan Ruck, Alexander Skarsgård, J. Smith Cameron, Justine Lupe, Fisher Stevens, Dagmara Dominczyk and David Rasche also appeared on stage to celebrate their win.”One last hurrah, I think,” began Ruck, who accepted the award on behalf of the cast. “I think right now you’re looking at some of the luckiest people on the planet and some of the most grateful because not only did we get to all work on one of the best television shows, you know, maybe ever, we made friends for life.”And I think the magic of “Succession” was that the writing was so fabulous. It inspired all of us to bring our A-game from the very beginning.”He concluded: “And we got off on watching each other work, and we caught lightning in a bottle. Lucky, you know? So, now we’re thrilled to be recognized by our peers.”It was the end of an era for the show’s cast as they rounded out their final award ceremony of the season. Despite losing out on Lead Actor and Lead Actress SAG awards to The Crown’s Elizabeth Debicki and The Last of Us’s Pedro Pascal, Succession’s fourth and final season scooped multiple gongs at the Emmys and Golden Globes last month.Culkin beat his co-stars Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox to the Best Actor prize at both ceremonies, while Sarah Snook and Macfadyen triumphed in the Best Actress and Supporting Actor categories.
The trio were seen sharing a loving hug at the awards ceremony, before reuniting on stage to pick up the award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.
Co-stars Alan Ruck, Alexander Skarsgård, J. Smith Cameron, Justine Lupe, Fisher Stevens, Dagmara Dominczyk and David Rasche also appeared on stage to celebrate their win.
“One last hurrah, I think,” began Ruck, who accepted the award on behalf of the cast.
“I think right now you’re looking at some of the luckiest people on the planet and some of the most grateful because not only did we get to all work on one of the best television shows, you know, maybe ever, we made friends for life.
“And I think the magic of “Succession” was that the writing was so fabulous. It inspired all of us to bring our A-game from the very beginning.”
He concluded: “And we got off on watching each other work, and we caught lightning in a bottle. Lucky, you know? So, now we’re thrilled to be recognized by our peers.”
It was the end of an era for the show’s cast as they rounded out their final award ceremony of the season.
Despite losing out on Lead Actor and Lead Actress SAG awards to The Crown‘s Elizabeth Debicki and The Last of Us‘s Pedro Pascal, Succession‘s fourth and final season scooped multiple gongs at the Emmys and Golden Globes last month.
Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in All of Us Strangers. Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
From a major Oscar winner to one of this year’s biggest awards snubs, this week is filled with some recent quality content. Plus, a fun new spin-off of The Good Wife, FX’s newest blockbuster series, and some animated fun are all premiering.
What to watch on Netflix
Everything Everywhere All at Once
With the Oscars now less than a month away, why not refresh your awards season memory by watching last year’s undeniable winner? Everything Everywhere All at Once all but swept the season, taking home seven Oscars (including Best Picture). In this genre-bending exercise in action and absurdism, Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn, a middle-aged Chinese immigrant who’s struggling to hold her life together: her business is getting audited by the IRS (represented by Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband (Ke Huy Quan) feels like their marriage is a mess, and her daughter (Stephanie Hsu) is tired of her mom not accepting her. Everything Everywhere All at Oncestreams Friday, February 23rd. Read Observer’s review.
The Tourist
A British export recently picked up by Netflix, The Tourist is a thrilling ride. Jamie Dornan stars as a man who, in Season 1, woke up alone and amnesiac in the Australian Outback. With a bevy of people out to get him, he had to act fast to try to piece together his true identity. Now, in Season 2, Dornan’s Elliot has an idea of who he is, and it’s not pretty. He ventures back to his native Ireland with Constable Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), where plenty of surprises await. Season 2 of The Touristpremieres Thursday, February 29th.
What to watch on Hulu
All of Us Strangers
A moving, heartbreaking, devastatingly relatable drama, All of Us Strangers takes a fantastical conceit and makes it into one of last year’s most human films. Andrew Scott stars as a lonely writer, dealing with unresolved guilt from his parents’ sudden passing several decades ago. But after a chance encounter with one of his apartment block’s few other residents (Paul Mescal), he ventures to his childhood home and finds his parents, exactly as they were all those years earlier. It’s a difficult needle to thread, but writer-director Andrew Haigh does it with a deep sense of sympathy. All of Us Strangerspremiered Thursday, February 22nd. Read Observer’s review.
Shōgun
Based on the novel of the same name, Shōgun is a new historical epic on FX. The series take place in feudal Japan, where three people’s paths intertwine. First, there’s the shipwrecked English sailor, John Blackstone (Cosmo Jarvis); second, there’s Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), who’s contending with his keen political rivals; lastly, there’s the Lady Moriko (Anna Sawai), whose necessary skills belie her mysterious past. It’s a sprawling drama filled with political intrigue, richly realized medieval battles, and fascinating characters, all coming together to make a spectacle of a show. Shōgunwill be available to stream Tuesday, February 27th.
What to watch on Amazon Prime
The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy
Following Hazbin Hotel, Amazon is looking to further bulk up its adult animated slate with The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy. The series follows Dr. Sleech (Stephanie Hsu) and Dr. Klak (Keke Palmer), a pair of brilliant besties with expertise in all sorts of intergalactic injuries and illnesses. But when a new patient presents a new possibility to cure a universal ill, they decide to take the opportunity—even if they may lose their lives (or their licenses) in the process. The rest of the talented voice cast includes Kieran Culkin, Maya Rudolph, Natasha Lyonne, and Sam Smith. The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxypremieres Friday, February 23rd.
The Green Knight
An Arthurian legend stunningly brought to life by filmmaker David Lowery, A24’s The Green Knight stars Dev Patel as Gawain. Taking cues from the 14th century poem, the film follows Gawain as he strikes down the mystical Green Knight for glory—in exchange for an equal blow bestowed by the knight the following year. It’s a medieval fantasy movie that feels decidedly out of place in the ‘20s, but that’s a good thing. The supporting cast of Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Barry Keoghan, and Sarita Choudhury help instill things with dread and mystery in equal measure, and Patel makes for quite the convincing knight. The Green Knightstreams until Thursday, February 29th. Read Observer’s review.
What to watch on Paramount+
Elsbeth
The Good Wife has already spawned a successful spin-off in The Good Fight, and now Elsbeth is ready to join the proceedings. Carrie Preston returns as fan-favorite Elsbeth Tascioni, the brilliant but unusual attorney. This new series sees her uprooting her successful Chicago career and bringing her unique talents to New York, where she works with NYPD Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) and Officer Blanke (Carra Patterson) to solve a litany of legal cases. For a character that’s existed in the background of shows for over a decade, it’s sure to be an interesting adventure for Elsbeth. Elsbethwill be available to stream starting Thursday, February 29th.
What to Watchis a regular endorsement of movies and TV worth your streaming time.
Watching a frazzled Kieran Culkin take home the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series at the Emmys? Perfect. Culkin has been winning awards for his work in season 4 of Successionas Roman Roy but taking home the Emmy for the final season is different. Especially when Sarah Snook joined him and took home Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
An emotional Culkin took to the stage, started to thank everyone and made a quip about being afraid of getting yelled at by Doris Bowman (Anthony Anderson’s mother and better known as “Mamma” whenever she’s on shows with him). What was really sweet was watching as Culkin thanked his wife, Jazz Charton.
The two married in 2013 and have two children together, who Culkin thanked. He thanked his “beautiful wife” and went on to say “for sharing your life with me and for giving me two amazing kids.” But two isn’t enough for Culkin clearly because he said, on stage, that he wants to have a third child. “And Jazz, I want more. You said maybe, if I win!”
It was, frankly, an adorable speech. For so many, they either know they’re going to win and are very composed or we get really honest and raw speeches, like Culkin’s. Maybe it is because he has often lost at the Emmys for Succession but to finally see Roman Roy take home the big prize, especially with the final season? It ruled! Actually, all the Succession wins were great!
Culkin joined Saran Snook in the first timers club and to see Shiv and Roman win was amazing. Snook thanked her daughter, who she was pregnant with during filming, saying that her “biggest thank you” was to her, even if she “is to someone who won’t understand anything that I’m saying at the moment, but I carried her with me in this last season. And really, it was her who carried me.”
She went on to dismiss her own talent and joke that it was easy acting while pregnant. “It’s very easy to act when you’re pregnant because you’ve got hormones raging. It was more that the proximity of her life growing inside me gave me the strength to do this and this performance, and I love you so much,” Snook said. “And it’s all for you from here on out. Thank you.”
Some of the best characters on the show!
(HBO)
While I am a Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) girl myself, season 4 really highlighted the work that both Snook and Culkin have put into Shiv and Roman in the show’s four season run. Roman and Shiv used to be at each other’s throats, furious with each other as the younger siblings, but watching them be there for the death of Logan Roy (Brian Cox) all before chaos ensued by the end? Truly perfection from my favorite rich horrible family.
The cast of Succession taking home Emmy awards is no surprise but to see Culkin and Snook get theirs for the final season is amazing.
Sarah Snook is an accomplished Australian actress known for her versatile performances in film and television. In the critically acclaimed TV series Succession, Snook brilliantly portrays Siobhan “Shiv” Roy, the only daughter of media tycoon Logan Roy.
As Shiv, Snook navigates the complex web of family politics and corporate intrigue, delivering a nuanced performance that captures the character’s intelligence, ambition, and internal struggles as she grapples with her role within the powerful and dysfunctional Roy family in the ruthless world of media conglomerates. Her portrayal has earned widespread praise, contributing to the success and acclaim of the show.
Sarah Snook opens up about her career
Sarah Snook is currently enjoying success and acclaim as an award-winning actress, but she recently shared some challenges she faced in the industry, particularly regarding her appearance. In a recent interview with The Times, the Succession star disclosed instances where she encountered criticism from influential figures in the entertainment business.
Early in her career, after winning a role, Snook experienced a disheartening moment when a casting director bluntly told her they didn’t want to hire her because she was a “nobody.” Despite securing the part based on the preferences of the writer and director, she was subjected to demands to alter various aspects of her appearance, including whitening her teeth, darkening her hair, and losing weight.
The difficulties didn’t end there for Snook. After accepting the role and complying with the stringent appearance requirements, she faced a humiliating incident when she decided to indulge in “the tiniest bit of chocolate cake”. A producer openly criticized her in front of the cast and crew, highlighting the broader issue of infantilizing women in the industry and questioning the need to restrict their autonomy in decision-making. She said, “And all the while I am dying inside. The infantilizing of women, to not be able to make their own decisions, why would we do that to women?”
Such instances of criticism and pressure related to appearance have long been a part of the entertainment world. In 2017, Carey Mulligan spoke about feeling “belittled” on film sets, while the following year, Rose McGowan revealed being told that her success hinged on men finding her attractive in order to secure roles.
In reality, bullying and undue pressure related to appearance are not novel occurrences in Hollywood. Sarah Snook’s recent victory at the Golden Globes is even more commendable considering the challenges she faced in an industry where such issues persist.
Sarah Snook reveals gender of her baby
Sarah Snook graced the red carpet at the 2024 Golden Globes, radiating joy as she shared exciting news about her personal life. Beaming with happiness, Snook disclosed that she recently welcomed a baby girl. When asked about motherhood, she expressed, “I love it. She’s the best”. Snook happily shared developmental milestones, mentioning that her baby is standing with support, although not yet walking. She continued, “She’s standing. Not walking yet, but she’s standing supported. She’s great. I love her.”
The actress initially revealed her journey into motherhood in May 2023, reflecting on the last episode of Succession. During her pregnancy, Snook hinted at the impending arrival of her baby, stating that it wouldn’t be much longer, particularly when she was around 32 weeks pregnant. She explained, “Like two months? Well, I’m at 32 weeks. I mean, you couldn’t super tell. Because it’s not super big, at least at the moment.”
Snook’s announcement about becoming a mother coincided with her and her husband, Dave Lawson, celebrating their second wedding anniversary. The couple had a secret ceremony in February 2021, a decision influenced by being in lockdown together at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a Vogue Australia cover story in November 2021, Snook fondly shared the story of falling in love with Lawson during the lockdown in Melbourne, referring to him as one of her best mates.
If Kendall (Jeremy Strong) hugging Roman (Kieran Culkin) toward the end of the series finale of Succession reminded viewers of anything, it’s that, when it comes to the Roys, love fucking hurts—and seems to cause far more pain than it’s worth. The last episode, “With Open Eyes,” offers an ominous title in and of itself without any backstory, but taking into account that it continues the Succession season finale tradition of using lines from John Berryman’s “Dream Song 29,” it adds yet another sinister layer. Berryman himself was haunted his whole life by his father’s suicide when the poet was just eleven. With Succession being, at its core, a show about daddy issues and what they can wreak, it seems appropriate to interweave this writer into final episode titles. And oh, what a final episode “With Open Eyes” is. And yes, it’s all about eyes in this narrative. Particularly how those with sight can be so blind (see also: King Lear).
The emphasis on eyes begins the moment Shiv (Sarah Snook) arrives in Barbados at the urging of her mother, Caroline (Harriet Walter), to come and comfort Roman after the beating he took at the end of episode nine, “Church and State.” Naturally, Shiv is only really interested in taking the trip so she can lock down another vote and really secure the GoJo deal for Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), who has promised to make her the CEO once the merger and acquisition goes through.
Alas, in the business realm, where misogyny reigns more supremely than anywhere else besides politics, it’s clear that Matsson actually doesn’t feel that comfortable with Shiv taking the front seat while he rides shotgun at best, and in the trunk at worst. A profile in some New Yorker-esque rag featuring a cartoon of Shiv as the puppet master pulling Matsson’s strings (even though the article is called “Is Lukas Matsson Taking Over the World?”) does little to assuage his wounded ego. After all, he’s already being forced to stand in the shadows for the sake of the deal going through with an anti-foreign business president taking the reins (or not…the finale leaves that open-ended as well). And it seems to dawn on him that it would be so much better to have someone (a man, of course) in charge that he could boss around with far more ease than he can Shiv, who easily lives up to her nickname by shiving Kendall in the back at the end of the episode. And just when it seemed like the trio was getting along so well, too. That is, back in the kitchen of Caroline’s “hellhole in paradise.” After Caroline remarked to Shiv about being unable to “tend to” Roman, “There’s something about eyes. They just kind of, ugh, revolt me.” Shiv clarifies, “Eyes? Like human eyes we all have?” “Yeah, I don’t like to think of all these blobs of jelly rolling around in your head. Just…face eggs.” To be sure, that is what they amount to when you can’t really see past the blinding nature of your own hubris.
Something all four of the Roy children suffer from…because let’s not forget about Connor (Alan Ruck). Even if his appearance is minimal as usual, but nonetheless effective. Especially when, via a fresh home movie, he stands next to Logan (Brian Cox) and delivers a performance of “I’m a Little Teapot” “in the manner of Logan Roy.” The lyrics then, naturally, go, “I am a little teapot—fuck off! Short and stout—what did you fucking call me? Here’s my handle, here’s my fuckin’ spout. When I get steamed up, you can hear me shout—Frank Vernon is a moron, Karl Muller is a kraut!” But Karl (David Rasche) can still sing a good Scottish folk song as he regales the dinner table with his rendition of “Green Grow the Rashes, O.” The lyrical content of which hits too close to home for the Roy children as they listen to the words, “Green grow the rashes, O/The sweetest hours that e’er I spend/Are spent among the lasses, O/The war’ly race may riches chase/And riches still may fly them, O/And even though they catch ‘em fast/Their hearts can ne’er enjoy them, O.”
What modicum of something resembling “hearts” the Roy children might have certainly don’t allow them to enjoy much, that’s for sure. Indeed, they all seem like masochists who actually relish torturing themselves, and reminding the other siblings of who they really are. For a brief moment in the episode, Shiv and Roman are compelled to make Kendall forget who he is at his core by obliging him in his long-standing, ceaseless desire to become Waystar Royco’s CEO. Upon Kendall informing Shiv that Matsson ousting her (per craftily-secured intel from Greg [Nicholas Braun]), the trio at last aligns to form a bloc that will stop the vote from going through. The only problem, as usual, is that none of them can agree on who should be CEO.
With Kendall swimming out to a dock to let his siblings confer in the darkness of a Barbados beach, Shiv and Roman discuss whether or not they ought to finally just let Kendall have what he’s been dreaming of ever since this whole saga began. Roman asks, “Should we give it to him?” An annoyed Shiv says, “Yeah, we probably should.” Shiv pauses and then adds deviously. “Unless we kill him.” Although meant “in jest,” it’s ultimately exactly what Shiv decides to do by ousting her big bro at the last minute. And when she cuts him with that knife, he definitely bleeds, saying, “I feel like…if I don’t get to do this—I, I feel like, that’s it. I might, I might, uh, like I might die.” And there is that exact feeling as we watch him sink via the elevator back into the bowels of the cruel real world. Whether or not he tries to kill himself now, Kendall is already dead.
Perhaps it’s all part of his karma for Andrew Dodds (Tom Morley), the waiter who ended up drowning at the end of season one as a result of Kendall’s insatiable search for drugs. When Kendall spots the waiter, just fired from Shiv’s wedding by Logan, he asks him for a “powder” connect. When Andrew tries to offer him some ketamine, which he does himself, Kendall insists he needs a “different vibe tonight”: coke. Thus, Kendall drives them through the darkened English countryside in search of Andrew’s connection. When he sees a deer in the road and swerves, Kendall crashes the car in the water, leaving a ket’d-out Andrew to die. In the present, when Shiv and Roman bring the murder up (which Kendall confessed to them in the season three finale, “All the Bells Say”), Kendall has lost all sense of guilt for the “incident,” immediately responding, “It did not happen. I wasn’t even there.” He then reiterates, “It did not happen!” Because when rich people say something didn’t happen, then it definitely didn’t. But this denial makes Shiv all the more disgusted by her brother, and therefore convinced they’re better off selling the company than letting him be the CEO. Blinded by her own jealousy, of course, she would rather watch the company burn in someone else’s hands than let Ken take his shot. And, talking once more of eyes and sight, when Roman reminds that, in terms of “bloodline,” Ken’s children aren’t “‘real’ real,” he escalates the eye jelly comment Caroline foreshadowed to the next level by pressing Roman’s eyeballs in (already having mushed Roman’s face into his shoulder in that previous scene of “aggressive love”).
This gives Shiv her opportunity to go back into the meeting and cast her vote in favor of the GoJo deal despite being betrayed by Matsson. And despite the fact that the CEO position will go to, of all people, Tom fucking Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen). The one person who should have been axed ages ago both personally and professionally, but managed to shapeshift his way to the top. Indeed, it’s his “mutability” that makes him so appealing to Matsson, whose opinion of this non-person is obviously cinched when Shiv describes him as “very plausible corporate matter” and “a highly interchangeable modular part.” In other words, exactly what Matsson is looking for in his own puppet. And, being that Tom sells himself by noting of his current position, “I’m cutting heads and harvesting eyeballs,” Matsson can tell he’s got the chops to give the chop to whoever he says, whenever he says. Of course, Tom’s mention of harvesting eyeballs is yet another nod to the notion of sight and vision—or rather, lack thereof—in this episode, and in Logan’s progeny.
Kendall obviously had no foresight about Shiv’s sudden treachery, prompting him to continue to stand in disbelief in the office where the emotional and physical altercation transpired. Roman finally lays the truth out for him: “It’s fuck-all, man. It’s bits of glue and broken shows, fuckin’ phony news, fucking come on.” Unable to see that reality, Kendall keeps urging, “We have this, we can still do this.” Himself seeing clearly for the first time, Roman balks, “Oh my god, man, it’s nothing. Okay? It’s just nothing. It’s fucking nothing. Stop it!” Kendall, who has placed his entire identity into this role of “successor” cannot believe what Roman is saying, repeating “no” over and over again until Roman interjects, “Yeah. Hey, we are bullshit… You are bullshit. You’re fucking bullshit, man. I’m fucking bullshit. She’s bullshit. It’s all fucking nothing, man. I’m telling you this because I know it, okay? We’re nothing. Okay.”
And so it is that Roman is the one to finally admit that what Logan said at the beginning of season four was accurate, even if harsh: “You’re such fucking dopes. You’re not serious figures. I love you, but…you are not…serious people.” Only ornaments and pawns in the life of Logan, the quintessential King Lear figure of this narrative. And yet, a Cordelia never seems to manifest in any of his children. It’s nothing but Regans and Gonerils where the obsession with “winning at inheritance” is concerned.
By ANDREW DeMILLO, The Associated Press. Published: Last updated:
There’s no Iron Throne, but the stakes feel just as high.
“Succession”, the critically acclaimed drama chronicling a Murdoch-esque feuding billionaire family, wraps its four-season run on Sunday May 28 with a highly anticipated 88-minute finale.
And just like another tentpole HBO show, “Game of Thrones”, there’s no shortage of theories over how the series will end and who will prevail. But instead of a throne, the Roy siblings are battling over the sprawling Waystar Royco media empire.
The Shakespearean-level intrigue has prompted speculation among fans looking for clues in past episodes, characters’ names and elsewhere. Even the final episode’s title, “With Open Eyes”, has critics poring through the John Berryman poem that has been used for each season finale’s title.
Here are some of the questions that remain as the finale nears.
WHERE DO THINGS STAND WITH THE ROY FAMILY?
“Succession” has been about who will ultimately run the media conglomerate founded by Logan Roy, the belligerent and profane Roy family patriarch played by Brian Cox.
For most of the series, three siblings have been vying for the crown: Kendall, played by Jeremy Strong; Roman, played by Kieran Culkin; and Shiv, played by Sarah Snook. A fourth sibling — Connor, played by Alan Ruck — instead mounted an ill-fated run for president.
By the end of season three, the siblings had buried their differences enough to attempt a corporate coup of their father — only to be betrayed by Shiv’s husband Tom Wambsgans, played by Matthew Macfadyen.
Brian Cox in ‘Succession’
— Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBO
The series’ most shocking twist came early this season, when Logan died on his way to close a deal with GoJo, a tech company.
Logan’s death and the power vacuum it created have led to renewed struggle among the siblings, with Kendall and Roman hoping to block the GoJo deal.
Show creator Jesse Armstrong told The New Yorker earlier this year “there’s a promise in the title of ‘Succession,’” a sign that there’ll be some certainty at least on this question.
The finale could live up to Logan’s statement in season 3 that life is “a fight for a knife in the mud.”
Kendall appeared in the penultimate episode to be on track to follow in his father’s footsteps, delivering an impromptu eulogy at Logan’s funeral after Roman was too grief-stricken to do so.
Jeremy Strong as Kendall in “Succession”.
— Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Media
After aligning himself with the far-right presidential candidate Jeryd Mencken — who the Roys’ network questionably declared the winner — Roman’s fortunes appeared to be falling and was seen fighting with protesters in the streets in the final scenes.
Shiv, meanwhile is still trying to shepherd the GoJo deal with a plan she’s concocted that would install her as the company’s chief executive in the United States.
Connor, after losing every state and endorsing Mencken, is instead planning for his hoped-for ambassadorship.
There are a few wild cards that remain, within and outside the Roy family. The biggest one of all is Greg, the cousin and fan favourite played by Nicholas Braun, known for his awkward quotes and verbal abuse he endures from Tom.
All of this is happening with the backdrop of an unsettled U.S. election that may have been swung to Mencken (Justin Kirk) with the help of the Roys’ cable network and a seemingly not-coincidental fire at a vote centre in a swing state.
Justin Kirk as Jeryd Mencken in “Succession”.
— Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Media
The scenario and the series’ Election Night episode has echoed the conversations revealed among Fox News executives and talent during the defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems that led to a nearly $800 million settlement with the network.
“Succession’s” fictional election results have both professional and personal implications for the Roy family, with protests over Mencken erupting throughout the city. But even Shiv seems willing to put her moral qualms aside at the prospect of making a deal with Mencken.
WHAT ABOUT TOM AND SHIV?
Tom and Shiv’s marriage had been on shaky ground before he betrayed her to Logan at the end of last season.
This season it’s even more so, with the two holding a no-holds-barred argument at a pre-election party where the two traded grievances and insults.
Shiv’s revelation to Tom on Election Night that she’s pregnant prompted one of the most gut-wrenching responses, with Tom asking her whether she was telling the truth or just using a new tactic against him.
The show continues to offer some signs of affection between the two, with Shiv telling an exhausted Tom to sleep at her apartment after the funeral, but it remains to be seen whether their marriage is salvageable.
There are plenty of examples of shows that lived on after their finales. “Game of Thrones” spawned a popular prequel series, “House of the Dragon”, while “Seinfeld” got a second try on its much-maligned finale on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.
Even “The Sopranos”, known for one of the buzziest finales of all time, came back with a movie looking at Tony Soprano’s beginning.
Armstrong has left open revisiting his characters in another fashion, and the possibilities for doing so are endless. A Tom and Greg buddy comedy? Or maybe a Logan Roy origin story, just to reveal the first time he said his signature vulgar phrase.
There must be something about being inside a rich person’s apartment overlooking the New York skyline that makes a party guest have a rather overt epiphany: New York kinda sucks. More to the point, it’s not actually that special. Naturally, those loyalists who are obsessed with NYC and defending its “honor” no matter how much it devolves into a moated island for the uber-affluent or the uber-deranged (usually those two qualities go hand in hand) will say that the likes of Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) and Lexi Featherston (Kristen Johnston) are merely “haters” because they’re not being treated like the “relevant” beings they see themselves as. Of course, Matsson is endlessly relevant (“fudged” GoJo numbers or not). As far as anyone (apart from the Roys) is concerned, he’s a rich white man doin’ big thangs—and should be treated as such.
Nonetheless, Lukas is feeling generally bored and resentful from the outset of showing up to Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Tom’s (Matthew Macfadyen) triplex in Lower Manhattan, where they’re hosting an election kickoff “tailgate party” (hence, the name of the episode being just that). It’s Shiv, playing the double agent throughout the ongoing and much talked about “deal” (one in which GoJo will absorb Waystar Royco), who urges Lukas to show up. Because not only will it throw a wrench into Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman’s (Kieran Culkin) plans to talk shit about him and GoJo, but it will also give Lukas a window of opportunity to shine bright like a diamond in front of the “most powerful people in America.” To Lukas’ surprise, it really is that easy to make an impact. More specifically, as he notes to Shiv in the coat room, “You know, I thought these people would be very complicated, but it’s…they’re not. It’s basically just, like, money and gossip” (ergo, Gossip Girl remaining the pinnacle of rich people life). And maybe that’s part of when the disenchantment with New York starts to sink in for Lukas. Sure, he’s been there many times and witnessed “the scene,” but never until this moment did it seem so clear to him how utterly lacking the innerworkings behind the veneer are. Like Dorothy and co. witnessing the Wizard of Oz being operated by nothing more than a little man behind a curtain, Lukas sees something far more disillusioning in these “movers and shakers.”
Shiv confirms, “Oh yeah, no. That’s all it is.” Money and gossip. Synonyms for wheeling and dealing as a “key player” in New York. And being a key player, of course, automatically means you have to be rich. As the phrase that triggers so many people goes, “You have to pay to play.” No money, no skin in the game. And it is, as most are aware by now, a very rigged one. Matsson has been all too happy to be part of that ruse, particularly since he’s been putting one on himself in order to come across as “big enough” to buy out Waystar. Perhaps he was hoping that New York, for all its prestige and having a “solid reputation” as an epicenter of finance and “glamor,” would have more to it going on behind the scenes than merely more of the same.
Kendall, committed as much to New York being the “end all, be all” as he is to his father’s company embodying that as well, insists that there is. And that Lukas is the inferior impostor who can’t hack it. In short, he’s no Anna Delvey when it comes to navigating New York as an impostor (as Kendall remarks to Shiv, “I fuckin’ knew he was a bullshitter. I’m tellin’ you…new money. You gotta hold those fresh bills to the light”). And yet, he actually does seem to know how to navigate. For he’s comfortable and confident enough in his own skin to “dare” to speak ill of the “greatest city in the world.” And amongst the “most powerful” people who run it, therefore all of America. Thus, we’re met with Lukas Matsson’s “Lexi Featherston moment” around forty-eight minutes into the episode. When he’s finally had enough of this blasé, bullshit party and wants to stir things up by asking, “So who’s, uh, who’s going out tonight in this shitty fucking town? Anyone? I gotta say, it’s pretty depressing from up here. You can really see how Second World it is.”
For those who don’t remember Lexi’s own anti-New York monologue from season six of Sex and the City, it bubbled to the surface after being at her wit’s end with the banality of everyone and everything at the so-called party. Thus, Lexi snaps after being told she can’t smoke inside near the window, “Fuckin’ geriatrics… When did everybody stop smoking? When did everybody pair off? This used to be the most exciting city in the world and now it’s nothing but smoking near a fuckin’ open window. New York is over. O-V-E-R. Over. No one’s fun anymore! What ever happened to fun? God, I’m so bored I could die.” And then she does, tripping over her own stiletto heel and falling out the window. Previously, when Carrie encounters her in the bathroom doing coke and tells Lexi she only came in to get away from the party, Lexi replies knowingly, “Oh Euro-intellectuals. I don’t know why I pulled strings to get an invite to this piece of shit party.” Funnily enough, Lexi would probably view Lukas as one of the “Euro-intellectuals” she finds so dull merely because he happens to be from Europe. But at least his “right-hand man,” Oskar Gudjohnsen (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), is “moon-beamed on edibles” according to Lukas. Which makes things slightly more amusing for him (like having a court jester or something) as he “mingles” among the “glitterati” of the political and business worlds.
Even so, just as Lexi did, Lukas finds himself utterly unimpressed by the goings-on at this “event.” Which, to him, feels like a sad attempt on these people’s part at pretending they’re living it up in some “fabulous” town with a lifestyle that couldn’t possibly be had anywhere else. Yet if it’s so fabulous, why does it bum him out so much as he stares out the window? Just as Lexi sort of did as she lit her cigarette and then turned her back to the city to give the “revelers” a harrowing recap on the state of affairs in NYC. A merciless “summing up” tailored to those who are still delusional about its “untouchable clout.”
Kendall being one such person as he replies to Lukas calling it a shitty town with, “I don’t know, [it’s a] pretty happening town, famously.” “Really? Is it though?” “Yeah.” Lukas reminds Kendall of his quaint American perspective by saying, “Compared to Singapore, Seoul…it’s like Legoland.” Kendall insists, “You know we still run shit though?” Lukas ripostes, “Hmm, like as in…only in New York?” Kendall confirms, “Yeah.” Lukas titters, “Right. Okay. Well, uh, nothing happens in New York that doesn’t happen everywhere.” A fairly obvious statement, but one that actually needs to be said to those living in the self-deceiving bubble of “nothing else being like New York.”
Starting to get offended as every NYC diehard does when a nerve is touched about “their” city, Kendall demeans in return to that comment, “You should get that written on a cup. Right? Shouldn’t he get that written on a cup? Like that would look so cool. You could sell that in a head shop in Rotterdam. Could be a good business for you.” Unfortunately, there’s still not much business in trying to “pull back the curtain” on New York blowing chunks, as it were. And even those who are “aware” of it still claim there’s nowhere else they’d rather be (especially if their choice is limited to staying in the U.S.).
Including Carrie Bradshaw, as she claims to her “partner,” Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov), “I have a life here.” This being in response to his desire for them to move to Paris together. He answers, “Yes, but what do you want to come home to? What do you want your life to be?” These questions inferring that her continuing in the same way as she always has for the sake of “being loyal” to New York will only lead her down a path of despair and loneliness (something And Just Like That… ultimately confirms). And it’s for this reason that Lexi’s timing to appear as a cautionary tale plummeting to her death prompts Carrie to take her own plunge—by leaving New York. Even if New York is her “boyfriend,” as she called it in the first episode of season five, “Anchors Away,” wherein she tells us in a voiceover that she “can’t have nobody talking shit about [her] boyfriend” (this after a sailor named Louis [Daniel Sunjata] does exactly that). Unfortunately for Carrie and those committed to New York like a mental institution, this is what both Lexi and Lukas “deign” to do in their honest assessment of a city that “never sleeps.” Which is perhaps part of why it has the propensity to always disappoint.
There are two ways of taking pills—two and only two.
You pinch the pill between your thumb and index finger, pick it up, and place it on your tongue. You take a drink of water. This method is thetweezers.
Or else: You place the pill in your palm and launch it toward your mouth, as if your teeth were battlements and your arm a siege machine. Don’t bother with the water. This method is thecatapult.
In real-world situations, many people—let’s say most—make a habit of the tweezers. In the movies, the opposite is true. An on-screen pill bottle works like Chekhov’s gun: Eventually, its contents will be fired at an actor’s mouth, or smashed between his lips, or hurled into his gullet.
Think of Austin Butler as the lead in Elvis, alone in his hotel room: He slaps those quaaludes in, liquid-free, sideburns tilted toward the ceiling. It’s a textbook movie swallow, the Stanislavski Fling. Butler got an Oscar nomination; so did Ellen Burstyn, popping diet pills in Requiem for a Dream. On Succession, Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin, each a two-time Emmy nominee, gobble meds on-screen. Going catapult is everywhere in cinema; it’s a gesture that befits the biggest stars. Angelina Jolie shoots her pills in Girl, Interrupted. So does Brittany Murphy. Jake Gyllenhaal catapults a pill in Donnie Darko. Albert Brooks in Modern Romance. In Goodfellas, Ray Liotta does it twice.
I love the movies! But it’s time we had a public-health announcement: The catapult is not, in fact, how a person should be taking pills. The act of swallowing a medication is so pervasive—and so intimate—that one easily forgets it is a skill that must be learned. In the U.S., roughly three-fifths of all adults are on prescription drugs; perhaps one-sixth will falter when they try to gulp it down. Twenty years ago, Bonnie Kaplan, a research psychologist at the University of Calgary, devised a new technique for helping people overcome this problem. Her method, as laid out in a mesmerizing video, suggests that you turn your head to make a pill go in. (No one has ever done this in a movie and no one ever will.) The turning motion helps open your upper esophageal sphincter, Kaplan says, though she does admit that more familiar postures have their own advantages. Some people like to raise their chins: “They say it is easier for the pill to slide down their throat, as if their tongue is a ski jump and it is a straight shot down the hill.” Others tip their heads the other way, chin-to-chest, “because they say it is more relaxing in the neck.”
But on the all-important matter of the hand, Kaplan’s messaging is very clear: You pick up the pill between your fingers; then you place it on your tongue. Which is to say, you do thetweezers. Other training methods are consistent with this rule. One approach for teaching children, published in 1984, describes “correctly placing” a pill on the back of the tongue—which clearly cannot be accomplished via a whole-hand toss; another, from 2006, says to “place the pill on your tongue towards the back of your mouth.”
That’s how people ought to take their pills. But how do people really do it, in real life? At the start of her research, Kaplan told me, she wasn’t telling takers what to do; she spent time observing how they liked to swallow medications on their own. The cinematic catapult was simply nonexistent in the wild, she said. “I never saw anyone just throw it back.” Never?Anyone? I asked Kaplan to describe the way she swallows pills herself, and she paused before she answered, as if she’d never really thought this through. “My husband and I both turn our heads to the right,” she said at last. First she’ll place the pill on the back of her tongue, and then she’ll twist and swallow. “But you know what?” she said. “I do often clap my hand to my mouth with my last pill or two.”
“It’s very individual,” Cindy Corbett, a nursing-science professor at the University of South Carolina, told me. She’s on a team that uses smartwatch accelerometers to track patients’ adherence to their medication regimen. Their system knows when someone moves a hand up to their face, she told me, but it won’t distinguish how a pill is being held, or whether it is placed or flung into the mouth. (Indeed, the study’s four-step “protocol-guided medication-taking activity” includes this ambivalent instruction: “Place/toss pill to mouth.”) When I asked Corbett what she’s seen herself in this regard, as a clinician, she drew a blank. “I’ve never thought about it that much.”
Maybe this is it: If you even have to think about the way you swallow pills, then you’re almost certainly someone who has trouble taking pills; and if you’re someone who has trouble taking pills, then you really should be taking pills in tweezer mode. In the off-screen world, to catapult is a privilege reserved for those with floppy throats. It’s the difference between the gags and the gag-nots. That inequality is only reinforced by the movieland fantasy of universal tossing, which sets up (as only Hollywood knows how) an impossible and unhealthy standard for behavior. Look, Elvis gobbles benzos; why can’t I? “People’s preconceived notions of how they’re supposed to swallow pills does lead to mental barriers,” says Marissa Harkness, a co-creator of the Pill Skills training kit, a case of sugar-based placebos made in different shapes and sizes.
When actors catapult on camera, they get the benefit of looking more dramatic: bigger gestures, more to see. But something more important is going on in movie swallows, a deeper meaning to the movement—an implied relationship of power. Taking pills by catapult suggests that you’re a victim, that your body and your mind are under siege. A hand that’s driven by compulsion fires drugs into the face. A teenage boy is pelted by his Prozac. But some stories need to have this flipped, so the pill can be a tool instead of an affliction. In Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro tweezers bennies. He’s a man on a mission. And the most famous pill-taking scene in movie history, from The Matrix, has Keanu Reeves pinch a pill between his thumb and index fingers in dramatic close-up, and deposit it into his mouth. Then he drinks a glass of water. (Is that a movie first?) A character who tweezers is going on a journey, the film director John Magary told me. He’s curious. He’s in control. (From Magary’s films to date: two catapults, zero tweezers.)
Perhaps the movies have this figured out. There are two ways of taking pills—two and only two. The tweezers or the catapult; self-knowledge or oblivion. In the end, the choice is yours.
By Stacy Lambe , ETOnline.com. Published: Last updated:
During “Succession” season 4, episode five, “Kill List,” written by Jon Brown and Ted Cohen and directed by Andrij Parekh, the Roy siblings — Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) — are summoned to Norway for a team-building retreat by GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård).
However, Waystar Royco’s old guard of executives, including Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-Cameron), grows increasingly concerned over the trip’s true purpose. And after Matsson makes a play for ATN, the family is forced to reconsider their plans for Logan’s (Brian Cox) crown jewel, the only thing their late father tried to keep for his own.
While “Succession” continues to drive toward the series’ ultimate conclusion, especially after Logan’s untimely death and how his successors handle the conglomerate’s overall future, the episode marked a welcome opportunity to see Roman and Lukas get to reconnect under very different circumstances.
Alexander Skarsgård
— Photo: Nina Westervelt/Variety via Getty Images
It’s also something that was a delight for Culkin, who opens up to ET about getting to work with Skarsgård again. “Alexander’s pretty freaking excellent,” Culkin says of the actor who first guest-starred in season 3 before being added full time in the series’ final episodes. “The moment he showed up, it was like, ‘Oh, he’s been on the show forever.’”
Culkin, who was “really pleased” about Skarsgård’s return, adds that ever since the two first filmed together, “I thought he and I had great rapport.”
And that chemistry continues into season 4 as the Roy siblings (and the company’s many executives) were forced to head overseas to Norway to hash out the final details in an increasingly fragile deal between GoJo and Waystar Royco.
In one particular emotional moment with Roman and Lukas at the top of a mountain, Culkin recalls that he and Skarsgård “ended up getting really close to each other’s heads, which wasn’t always in [the script].” During that scene, Roman finally comes to terms with his feelings over the death of his father and what he wants out of the business moving forward.
It was also a full-circle moment for the two characters (and actors) who first connected during Kendall’s birthday party in season 3.
“The second scene we ever shot was just us sitting across from each other at ‘Too Much Birthday’ thing and it was just a chat,” Culkin recalls, explaining that because Roman knew what he wanted from Lukas, and Lukas knew what his position was, “it was less of a scene and more just like, ‘I was gonna talk to him.’”
“He said something about his daughter and I said, ‘Oh, you have a daughter? I didn’t know that.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, me neither.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s great. What’s her name?’ And he goes, ‘F**k if I know.’ And then we laughed and then started talking more about business and started talking about family,” Culkin says of them getting to play with each other and going off script in the scene until they “brought it back to the dialogue” that was written.
He adds, “It was just easy. There was no skip or flub or anything… So, it’s great working with him.”
As for Skarsgård, he shared that it “was a real treat” getting to work with the cast of Succession again. “Especially coming onto the show after two and a half years… I was really grateful because they’re really sweet themselves. They’re welcoming and hospitable and invited me, and [they were] so generous with their time and energy,” he said.
He added, “It made my job very easy.”
As for his take on Lukas, Skarsgård said that his character is driven by competition, even if there are billions of dollars at stake. “I don’t think he’s driven by greed or the need to accumulate more wealth,” the actor offered. “He’s very competitive — just like a game, any other game. It happened to be about a multibillion-dollar company acquisition. But for him, it’s like any other game.”
And it’s clear in this latest episode, that it was a game that Lukas had “a lot of fun [getting] to play.”
Despite the opportunity to film on location, Culkin says it was surprisingly difficult at times, especially considering how short the turnaround time was before they wrapped filming on the series.
“For me, going to Norway, it was hard because you go somewhere to work — and I was there for 11 days and shot for 10 of the days or something and we moved around towns and I think I checked out of eight hotel rooms — and there was something about being somewhere that was so beautiful and not being able to appreciate it,” he says. “That was actually rather hard.”
Despite that, Culkin did get a chance in between takes during that emotional scene with Skarsgård to go back up to the top of the mountain. “I was told, ‘You have half an hour to set up for the next thing.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what to do with myself.’ And I went, ‘Wait, I’m gonna go back to the top of the mountain and look,’” the actor recalls.
“I went up there and it was f**king beautiful,” Culkin says of getting to appreciate the real-life moment after “the intensity” of filming that scene. “I got, like, 20 minutes to sit and rock and look [out]. It was kind of beautiful.”
“Why? Because she’s brought a ludicrously capacious bag. What’s even in there, huh? Flat shoes for the subway? Her lunch pail? I mean, Greg, it’s monstrous. It’s gargantuan. You could take it camping. You could slide it across the floor after a bank job.”
Ah, Cousin Greg. Succession’s ultimate himbo who just can’t seem to dovetail into the corporate conglomerate world no matter how hard he tries. In Season 4’s debut, Cousin Greg (Nicolas Braun) brings a date to Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) birthday party…big mistake for one half of The Disgusting Brothers.
The issue Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfayden) has with Greg The Egg’s Tinder date, Bridget, isn’t that he’s jealous…it’s that she’s clearly trying too hard to fit in. Tom delivers the most iconic quip about poor Bridget’s Burberry tote that she probably wore because it was the most expensive thing in her closet. However, anyone sickeningly wealthy could tell you she obviously made the wrong choice.
The Burberry Vintage Leather Check Satchel Bag may be valued at around $2,900, but we live in a world of Birkins. While Bridget’s tote may have been the talk of the party if she hung out with me, it was an eyesore amongst the likes of the Roy family. Do you think Gerri would be caught dead with a vintage Burberry as opposed to Gucci’s understated Jackie?
To the upper echelons of society, there’s no worse crime than sporting a tote bag to a high society function. What could you possibly need in your bag besides your black card and perhaps a mirror? A clutch certainly would’ve been more suitable.
But surely Shiv (Sarah Snook) doesn’t carry a bag so large that it could be used to complete a heist during her father’s birthday (if she were to show up). And would Roman (Kiernan Culkin) or Kendall (Jeremy Strong) be caught dead with such a crass woman?
But let’s be honest here, Tom Wambsgans. There is nothing more satisfying than a Mary Poppins-esque bag. What if my makeup runs midday and I need a touchup? What’s going to hold a towel, a change of clothes, and my water bottle on the beach?
Ludicrously capacious bags serve both men and women. My gargantuan bag indeed carries my lunch pail, a sweater in case the office gets cold, flat shoes for the subway, and I’d probably store egregious amounts of cash in it if I had the access.
There’s nothing more satisfying than running errands and having my hands free. If I can make multiple stops only using my gigantic tote bag, then I consider it a success.
And while a tote bag may not be the most functional “going out bag,” it certainly serves its purpose at all other hours of the day. If you’re in the market for the nightmarish, ludicrously capacious bag, here are some of my favorites:
Just as it is for the Roy family at large, for many viewers of Succession, Connor Roy (Alan Ruck) is pure background. It hasn’t really been until season four that he’s been permitted his moment to shine. To “take a stand,” as Ruck’s most famous character, Cameron Frye, would say. And it starts with episode two, “Rehearsal,” in which he displays the full extent of his vulnerability during a karaoke session. Not just because he opts to sing Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” but because, just as he did in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as Cameron, he decides to take a stand and defend it. And yes, singing Leonard Cohen at karaoke (even if only in a room as opposed to a more public stage) definitely counts among the ranks of taking a stand and defending it (regardless of Roman [Kieran Culkin] jibing, “This is Guantanamo-level shit”).
It’s no coincidence that he should choose that particular song, either. Not with Cohen singing, “I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert/You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.” Lest one needs to be reminded, the early seasons of Succession find Connor living alone in the desert of New Mexico in his palatial palace. A cold place in a hot climate, where he still can’t seem to finagle something akin to love. Not even from his “girlfriend,” Willa (Justine Lupe), a call girl he pays to keep around. Eventually paying enough to make her want to be his full-time girlfriend. But back to the lyrics of “Famous Blue Raincoat,” also fitting for Connor’s sibling situation with the Cain and Abel allusion in the line, “And what can I tell you my brother, my killer?”
Both Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman have no need of killing their half-bro, however—for he’s so irrelevant to their patriarch, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), that wasting any energy on him would be wasting much-needed focus on “securing the position.” CEO of Waystar-Royco. Something that was never going to belong to “hapless” Connor, who spent three years of his childhood without seeing his father at all. “Attachment” isn’t exactly a thing between him and Logan, nor is it between Cameron and Morris, who never appears once in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—merely looms large as a source of fear. Especially after Ferris (Matthew Broderick) gets Cam (“Con” also has a shortened version of his name) to take his dad’s Ferrari out for the day.
Not one to be disagreeable, Cameron ultimately concedes to loaning out the car after several half-hearted attempts at protesting. Lying in bed genuinely sick (even if only in the head) as opposed to Ferris’ fake-out version of sickness, it’s clear Cam’s family doesn’t need to be played to in order for him to get out of school. They’re never around anyway. Least of all his father, off being the “provider” of the family, therefore excused from anything like involvement. Yes, it sounds a lot like Logan Roy. And Cameron, like Con, leads a privileged existence with the trade-off of never experiencing any emotional attachment or care whatsoever. With regard to “Con,” there’s one in every family, to be sure. Someone who never gets quite the same amount of attention or consideration. Whether because their personality is more demure or they don’t seem “special” enough to warrant as much care. Connor falls into both categories, with Shiv (Sarah Snook) in the Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara) role and Kendall and Roman trading off on being the overly arrogant Ferris Bueller (Roman obviously being more Ferris-y than Ken). A scene of Cameron stuffed in the back of the Ferrari that Ferris and Sloane are effectively using him for speaks volumes vis-à-vis this dynamic. The only time anyone bothers with Con is when they need him for something…so basically they never much bother with him.
Sure, he’s there for “ceremonious” events like birthdays and family vacations, but, by and large, he’s out of the fold. Until season four rolls around and, suddenly, the “Rebel Alliance” that is Shiv, Kendall and Roman ends up prompting Con to say, “This is how it is, huh? The battle royale? Me and dad on one side, you guys on the other.” This after Willa has walked out on their wedding rehearsal dinner, leaving Con with no one to “turn to” for “comfort” but his so-called family. The trio of his siblings (all of whom show up late because Logan cut off their helicopter access) amounts to one giant Ferris Bueller, the narcissist in the dynamic constantly taking up space and demanding more from the Cameron/Connor of the outfit. Meanwhile, all Connor is asking for is a round of karaoke at Maru, one of many overpriced options within the parameters of Koreatown’s 32nd Street.
Upon arriving to said location (under duress for most of them), Connor is quick to admit that he told Logan where they are, and he’s coming over to “talk things out”—presumably the deal that Shiv, Kendall and Roman want to fuck by asking for more money of Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) in exchange for merging his streaming company, GoJo, with Waystar. In defense of himself, Connor replies to the sibling backlash, “My life isn’t filled with secrets like some people. And I want my father to be at my wedding.”
To everyone’s surprise, though, Logan wants to make an “apology.” Or the closest he can get to one. But with all the hemming and hawing, Kendall is quick to redirect his father’s messaging by demanding, “What are you sorry for, Dad? Fucking ignoring Connor his whole life?” He later adds, “Having Connor’s mother locked up?” This being why Connor refers to the cake at his wedding as “loony cake.” A type of dessert he apparently associates with Victoria sponge cake and doesn’t care for at all because it was what was fed to him for a week after his mother was institutionalized. So yeah, even Kendall can take a moment here and there to stand up for his older brother and acknowledge that Con might have had a more emotionally bankrupt childhood than all of them.
In that regard, his bid for normalcy is earnest when he declares to his brothers and sister, “I would like to sing one fucking song at karaoke because I’ve seen it in the movies and nobody ever wants to go.” Perhaps he saw it in a certain form in the movie that he co-starred in with Broderick, as the latter plays the titular character lip-syncing to Wayne Newton’s “Danke Schoen” and The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” on a parade float in the middle of Chicago. Something Cameron nor Connor would ever do. Possibly because attention-seeking is a type of love-seeking. And that’s never been either character’s “game.” Though both slowly start to realize that maybe it should be. Even as Connor notes something as heart-wrenching to his siblings as, “The good thing about having a family that doesn’t love you is you learn to live without it… You’re all chasin’ after Dad saying, ‘Oh love me, please love me. I need love, I need attention.’ You’re needy love sponges, and I’m a plant that grows on rocks and lives off insects that die inside of me. If Willa doesn’t come back, that’s fine. ‘Cause I don’t need love. It’s like a superpower.”
Cameron Frye knows that’s not entirely true. It’s also a curse that causes severe anxiety and depression, finally pushing him toward the revelation, “I’m bullshit. I put up with everything. My old man pushes me around…I never say anything! Well he’s not the problem, I’m the problem [cue a lawsuit against Taylor Swift]. I gotta take a stand. I gotta take a stand against him. I am not gonna sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I’m gonna take a stand. I’m gonna defend it. Right or wrong, I’m gonna defend it.” Something Connor must decide to do in “Connor’s Wedding,” easily the most landmark episode of Succession ever aired. And yet, as usual, just because his name is in the title doesn’t mean he gets the theoretical spotlight. No, this is all about his father. Just as it always is. The same geos for Cameron and Morris, inciting the former to finally lose it and kick the shit out of the Ferrari as he screams, “I’m so sick of his shit. I can’t stand him and I hate this goddamn car! Who do ya love? Who do ya love? You love a car!”
To this, Logan Roy might placate, “I love you…but you are not serious people.” These are his final sentiments directed at his children. Though no one is aware of it until the next day, when Logan’s heart fails (ironically appropriate) while on a private jet to negotiate the deal again with Matsson…thanks to his own kids painting him in a corner to do so. It was the previous night at karaoke that Logan understood the scope of his disgust with them. For here he is, the affluent, distant father figure (like Cameron’s) being unclear what more his children could “take” or want from him after everything he’s already given. Back out on the street with his latest “right-hand woman,” Kerry (Zoe Winters), he clocks a homeless man digging through the trash and seethes, “Look at this prick. They should get out here. Some cunt doing the tin cans for his supper, take a sip of that medicine. This city…the rats are as fat as skunks. They hardly care to run anymore.” Obviously taking a swipe at his lazy, greedy children. Except for Con, who really just wants it all to be over. Unfortunately, it’s only just getting started now that Logan is dead. And as usual, Con is the last to know about it, gently informed by Kendall only to instantly reply, “Oh man, he never even liked me,” trying to smooth that statement over with, “I never got the chance to make him proud of me.”
Of course, that was never going to happen. Because there is no “pleasing” a man like Logan or Morris. And Connor always getting the short end of the stick from his father reaches a poetic peak with him dying on Connor’s wedding day, casting a dark, attention-stealing pall over the event. All Con can finally assess about it to Willa is: “My father’s dead and I feel old.” Cameron probably would have said the same thing. And he, too, probably would have soon after carried out his intended plans for the day. After all, he’s not one to let his old man push him around anymore, especially not now that he’s dead. He’s going to take a stand (for “love”) and defend it. Right or wrong.
That’s why, in the end, he goes through with the wedding, not bothering to join his three half-siblings as they go to deal with their father’s body and make a statement to the press. In this sense, Connor has always been the freest, learning long ago not to bother chasing down the love of a patriarch who was incapable of it. Perhaps learning that from the person he was in another life: Cameron Frye. Meanwhile, Connor’s siblings will continue to volley for Logan’s invisible favor in not-so-subtle ways even after he’s gone.
Warning: Spoilers for “Succession” season 4 episode, “The Munsters,” written by creator Jesse Armstrong and directed by Mark Mylod. Alan Ruck, Kieran Culkin and more from the cast talk to ET as they break down what’s at stake for members of the Roy family and tease the shifting dynamics that will follow the first episode.
The Emmy-winning family saga, “Succession”, is finally back with new episodes, as the HBO series comes to a close with its fourth and final season. According to the cast, the final installment promises to be as “surprising” as ever, with the “gloves coming off.”
“It’s thrilling to watch,” Alan Ruck teases, with Nicholas Braun adding that “this season is just ratcheted up. It’s kind of just madness. And the intensity of it all is another level than we’ve had in the last three seasons.”
Taking place just a few months after the shocking season 3 finale, the premiere picks up with three of the Roy siblings — Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) — striking out on their own, as they prepare to launch a “revolutionary new media brand” to compete with their father Logan’s (Brian Cox) aging conglomerate, Waystar Royco.
“They’re sort of forging their own path together,” Culkin says of their plan, despite lingering doubts. “It’s a good idea, but there’s a couple reasons to hesitate… Like, going toe to toe with Dad is scary because historically, anytime anyone does that, they lose.”
Elsewhere, Logan is celebrating his birthday with his cohort of longtime executives, including Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-Cameron), and the remaining family members who’ve sided with him, son Connor (Ruck) and his fiancée, Willa (Justine Lupe), Shiv’s estranged husband, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), and cousin, Greg (Braun).
The episode then sees the two sides of the family get into a bidding war over Pierce Global Media, which is run by matriarch Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones), with Kendall, Shiv and Roman ultimately beating out their father — and securing an early win in their ongoing personal and professional war.
(Although Jones’ return in the final season is “quite small,” she says she enjoyed the part she had in it. “The few times I got to play with the gang, it was just heaven on a stick.”)
“I think what they actually want to do is get rid of Dad. They want to fight him and beat him. They wanna make him feel bad,” Culkin says of Roman and his siblings’ continued efforts to take down Logan. The actor says Roman is “justifying it by saying, ‘It’s a good business decision.’ But that’s not why you’re doing it.”
However, for Roman, despite what may look good on paper, there’s a faltering need to keep going at it with his family. “Sure, that’s good business, but I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to do that anymore. We’ve done that so much,” Culkin says.
While a strong opening to the season, the episode just gives a taste of the stakes at hand and how things have dramatically shifted for many of the show’s other core relationships.
For Tom, who learns that Shiv wants a divorce, and Greg, who continues to rise within the ranks of ATN, that means a big change in how the two interact moving forward. “There are some shifts. There are some unexpected, aggressive turns in their relationship season,” Braun says. “Their relationship gets weirder and Tom is probably meaner than ever. Loyalty is tested for sure.”
When it comes to Gerri and Roman, in particular, things ended in “a very abrupt way,” Cameron says, describing the end of their relationship as a “cold and awful breakup.”
Culkin, however, suggests there’s no hard feelings between the two, at least not on Roman’s end. “It’s a couple months later and I feel there’s probably not really any bad blood,” he says. Despite ending season 3 on opposite sides of the attempted coup, “she made the right business decision in that moment for her and he knows that.”
But there still may be some fiery encounters to come, with Cameron teasing that there are still “some pretty heavy dynamics going on between them.”
For Connor, who mainly has sided with his father to keep bankrolling his presidential campaign, “his political ambitions” are his main focus, Ruck says. “It’s not an easy path but he’s determined to try to the best of his ability to make this thing move forward.”
And as teased in the previews for the upcoming episodes, there will be a wedding for Connor after he finally proposed to Willa during season 3. “Things seem to be moving forward with Willa. It seems like the marriage is on,” Ruck says, before adding, “Without spoiling things, there might be some bumps in the road. But we’ll see.”
But as we know from previous seasons, weddings on Succession are never drama-free.
“Succession” season 4 airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max.
