Tag: Matthew Broderick

Sarah Jessica Parker steps out with rarely-seen kids in NYC

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Sarah Jessica Parker enjoyed a rare family outing in New York City on Monday night alongside her husband, Matthew Broderick, and their three kids, James, Tabitha and Marion.

The family of five made a low-key appearance at the release party for Marc Shaiman’s book, Never Mind The Happy: Showbiz Stories From A Sore Winner, marking their first public outing together since 2022.

Sarah was a proud mother as she sported an all-black ensemble with an eye-catching pearl necklace, while Matthew, whom she married in 1997, looked dapper in a red patterned suit.

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Sarah and Matthew attended the low-key event with their three kids

Their 23-year-old son, James, was laid back in a gray T-shirt and black jeans, while 16-year-old Tabitha looked chic in a green sweater and black pants. Her twin sister Marion opted for a beige blouse and blue jeans on the night.

Tabitha and Marion’s most recent public appearance was at the premiere of Smash on Broadway in April 2025, while James joined his parents at the Golden Globes in early January 2026, twinning with his father in a tuxedo with a large white flower in the lapel.

Sarah was honored with the Carol Burnett Award on the night, and made sure to pay homage to her family in her emotional acceptance speech. “To my beloved family, my brilliant husband Matthew Broderick, who has been my husband for just shy of 30 years,” she said. “Who has given me a family discount, an all-access pass to his masterclass in acting, comedy and dedication.”

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The actress paid tribute to her family during her Golden Globes speech

“And to the family we have made. Our divine James Wilkie, [Marion] and Tabitha, oh God. I love you so deeply and admire so much the people that you are becoming. That every day at home and at work, I want to make you proud,” she concluded.

Learn more about Sarah and Matthew’s three children below…

WATCH: Meet Sarah Jessica Parker’s three unique children

While James is pursuing a career in Hollywood, and even starred alongside his father in an episode of Elsbeth in February 2025, Tabitha and Marion are less interested in following in their parents’ footsteps. “I really want my children to be educated in the ways that are fulfilling to them,” the Sex and the City star told E! News.

“I don’t think that there is one way to be an educated person or to be equipped to be an adult and try to fashion a life for yourself after what would be considered ‘finishing college’ – let’s say 22 years old.”

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The girls last appeared in public in April 2025

“You want for them to be pursuing things that are exciting and challenging and hard and gratifying and to be able to ultimately take care of themselves, support themselves – emotionally, financially,” she continued.

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James has dipped his toes in to the world of acting

“And that they can be in the world and be a reliable person to themselves and to other people. And so we talk about work like that.” While the twins are not interested in an acting career, they have shown an increasing affinity for fashion, as Sarah told W Magazine.

“They like clothing, but it’s not playing an oversized role in their life. They definitely have ideas about how they want to feel and look when they walk out the door, but they don’t seem particularly distracted [by it],” she explained.

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Faye James

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January 27, 2026
Old French Bores: Molière Is Blasphemed in This Tin-Eared ‘Tartuffe’

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Matthew Broderick and David Cross. Photo: Marc J. Franklin

One is tempted to execute a stunt review of the new Tartuffe in heroic couplets, as the late, great Richard Wilbur translated Molière’s comedies for six decades, beginning with The Misanthrope in 1955. For example, I could open with:

This shoddy Tartuffe with its lazy rhymes

Is a cracked church bell that gratingly chimes.

But I won’t subject you to my doggerel; I had to choke down so much already at New York Theatre Workshop. Lucas Hnath’s version of the 1669 French classic adopts a defiantly dopey attitude to the original Alexandrine verse, spitting out countless false rhymes (special/medal), pointless recycling (bastard/disaster—twice!) and triplets that seem to relish their own insipidity (“to touch your ass is no more crass than worshipping at holy mass”). Wilbur opted for a sleek line of iambic pentameter, and his bouncy euphony, highly playable and delightful on the ear, remains the gold standard. Hnath’s effort, by contrast, is a collegiate prank, a hectic hash of profanity, stoner chuckles and feints at moral philosophy. He seems unconcerned if his rhyming falls flat or his characters sound like idiots. The outraged matriarch Mme Pernelle (Bianca del Rio, haute camp) lambastes her relatives for being louche and uncouth:

I am stunned you think it’s okay that the cleaning woman has so much say, be that as it may,
go ahead and let the maid just have her way, I can no longer stay and watch you all fall into
moral decay.

I’m not cosplaying rhyme police; this is cheap stuff. Once you hear Hnath’s weakness for flat or tinny notes, you can’t un-hear it, and it will bug you for two hours sans intermission. For some reason, he formats his script in prose, as if to bury the juvenile wordplay.

What a misguided affair from such an accomplished team. Director Sarah Benson has collaborated intensely with living or modern playwrights (her productions of An Octoroon, Fairview, and Blasted were unforgettable) but sinks under the weight of a hyper-stylized design and resolutely unfunny text. Hnath has been justly celebrated for form-bending in weird, metatheatrical dazzlers such as Dana H. and A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney (which Benson staged at Soho Rep). It’s unclear what the goal was here. Drunk Theatre does French Baroque? Hip-hop Molière without actual rapping?

Amber Gray. Photo: Marc J. Franklin

Tartuffe is a clockwork farce about the hypocrisy of moralizers and the credulity of followers. Wealthy patriarch Orgon (David Cross) has fallen under the spell of Tartuffe (Matthew Broderick), a nondenominational preacher who espouses a vaguely Catholic credo of sexual abstinence and mortification of the flesh. Naturally, this doesn’t prevent Tartuffe from gorging on Orgon’s larder or lusting after his attractive wife, Elmire (Amber Gray, glamour and grace). Orgon’s son, Damis (Ryan J. Haddad, petulant delight) sees through the hypocrite—as does mouthy maid Dorine (Lisa Kron) and mousy daughter Mariane (Emily Davis). Perpetually posing with a frozen smile and singsong delivery, Ikechukwu Ufomadu pops in now and then as Mariane’s nincompoop suitor Valère. There’s a tasting menu of acting styles clashing onstage, but Ufomadu really seemed to be in his own play. I kinda wish I’d been at that one.

To be sure, it’s a murderer’s row of gifted actors, and David Cross (Arrested Development) cannot not get laughs playing a confident dolt. Davis simpers and grimaces deliciously as Orgon tries to arrange a marriage between her and Tartuffe, and Haddad throws very amusing tantrums. Kron seems baffled by the world around her, but manages dry one-liners. As Elmire’s brother and a voice of reason, Francis Jue may not have the flashiest role, but he finds a pleasing balance of witty restraint and outrage. About Matthew Broderick, I don’t know what to say. After seeing umpteenth performances from him on Broadway and Off-Broadway, I’m still shocked by his limited range and strangulated physical vocabulary. His Tartuffe talks (and walks) like Kermit the Frog in a frock coat. His understated squeaks render some lines droll, but on the whole, Broderick recedes into the muted green walls (mock-Louis XIV furnishings by set collective dots).

Emily Davis and Ikechukwu Ufomadu. Photo: Marc J. Franklin

Benson and her designers deserve credit for not setting Tartuffe in a modern-day megachurch or MAGA country. Her actors are arranged in a hermetically sealed, cartoon version of 17th-century France, with sumptuous costuming by Enver Chakartash so colorful and candied it’s like a crate of macarons on legs. Sound design by Peter Mills Weiss mixes boxing-match bells and industrial droning, and interstitial dances by Raja Feather Kelly gesture (superfluously) toward the characters’ lives of leisure, like mimed ballroom dancing and tennis. Heather Christian contributes a dirge at the end that seems to point out everyone is guilty of moral certitude, which kills the already decomposing satirical vibe.

Look, finding comic gold in Molière is famously hard. The antique Gallic humor is refined and mannered, the Wilbur translations, as mentioned, are hard to beat, and the structured nature of the farce needs a super-deft, well-directed group of clowns to keep it popping. This past summer, Red Bull Theater’s The Imaginary Invalid actually worked. Adapter Jeffrey Hatcher opted for a prose translation that went straight for the funny bone. It was all there: visual gags, silly accents, runaway mugging, jokes about Les Misérables. Punch lines that punched. At New York Theatre Workshop, it’s style without substance—which Molière mocked in the first place.

Tartuffe | 2 hrs. No intermission. | New York Theatre Workshop | 79 East 4th Street | 212-460-5475 | Click Here For Tickets

Lisa Kron and Emilty Davis. Photo: Marc J. Franklin

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David Cote

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December 19, 2025
The Cast of ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’ Then and Now

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A look at what Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jennifer Grey and more have been doing in the years since the film was released in theaters on June 11, 1986.

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Kimberly Nordyke

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October 6, 2025
How Matthew Broderick Wound Up Playing Nightmare Matthew Broderick in ‘Only Murders’

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There are two mystery players in each season of Only Murders in the Building—who’s the killer, and who’s the celebrity playing an exaggerated version of themselves? The Arconia’s penthouse apartment was occupied by Sting in season one and Amy Schumer in season two. Season 3’s seventh episode, titled “CoBro,” brings the arrival of Matthew Broderick as a heightened, hysterical version of Matthew Broderick.

The actor is hired as a replacement for Steve Martin’s Charles Haden Savage in Oliver Putnam’s (Martin Short) ill-fated stage musical, Death Rattle Dazzle. Optimistic that days spent creatively clashing with his leading man are over, Oliver tells Broderick at his audition, “I’ve had sex dreams about this moment.” Charles is less effusive. “This is not the first time Matthew has swooped in and stolen a role from me,” he quips. To which Broderick replies, “For the millionth time, you would not have been a good Ferris Bueller. You were 41.”

Oliver agrees to collaborate with Broderick on his role, but underestimates just how much of a method actor he’s catering to. “When I did War Games, I taught myself to write code. For my role in Election, I started teaching high school and dating students,” Broderick says without an ounce of irony. His increasingly complex suggestions lead to constant rehearsals and rewrites.

Mel Brooks, the 97-year-old creator of The Producers, one of Broderick’s most famous projects, confirms the actor’s difficult demeanor: “You didn’t tell him that you were open to his ideas in any way did you?” he asks. “Oh Oliver, you’re fucked.” Broderick is promptly fired, but not before Oliver tears into his incessant process.

Commitments to Broadway’s Pictures From Home and The Gilded Age season two made Nathan Lane, who won a guest-acting Emmy for his role as Teddy Dimas on the series, unavailable for the mini Producers reunion. But it was Broderick’s Broadway bonafides that made him a perfect fit for the new episodes. Given the focus on Oliver’s fictional musical in the show, the series tapped composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen, The Greatest Showman) to compose songs alongside veteran songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Some Like It Hot, Hairspray). Other numbers are penned by A Strange Loop’s Michael R. Jackson and Waitress creator Sara Bareilles. Series casting director Tiffany Canfield, who has cast musicals for the stage (Rock of Ages) and screen (The Little Mermaid, In the Heights), tells Vanity Fair that the season’s Broadway setting “led to the idea that it would be hilarious if Matthew Broderick played himself in this,” adding, “Obviously, he’s a huge theater star in the same style of Nathan Lane and Linda Emond, multi-Tony winner, playing our producer. So he just felt like part of the family.”

Broderick has played versions of himself before—on episodes of The Jim Gaffigan Show, Louie, and in 2015’s Trainwreck—but Only Murders’ version of Broderick comes off as pompous and without a shred of self-awareness. As such, the show’s casting directors were hesitant about approaching the real-life actor for the part.

“It’s always kind of scary to make that call to any actor to play themselves,” says Canfield, particularly when “it might be a non-flattering portrayal of yourself.” But the pedigree that comes with a show that’s been nominated for 28 Emmys helps. Plus, Broderick was in good company alongside new cast members Paul Rudd as a pretentious movie star-turned murder victim and Meryl Streep as an actress who never made it big. “The writers have done such a good job of creating hilarious versions of Amy and Sting, and the previous seasons speak for themselves,” Canfield says. “So I feel like even with actors who are approached to play themselves, and certainly Matthew in this case, it feels like the door is already partially open.”

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Savannah Walsh

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September 12, 2023
The Preeminent Question Presented By No Hard Feelings: “Doesn’t Anyone FUCK Anymore?!”

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Perhaps if there is one key aim of No Hard Feelings (apart from being 2023’s answer to a “sex” comedy), it’s to highlight the flaccidity of a generation. While millennials endured their fair share of being called “snowflakes,” that derisive epithet has shifted squarely onto the shoulders of Gen Z—tenfold. Particularly as their “kind” is the first to be known for having less sex than their forebears. Not so coincidentally, the documented decline in mental health seems to have coincided with the documented decline in an interest in sex. Based on what we see in Gene Stupnitsky’s latest film, it’s clear Gen Z’s sanity and self-confidence could be greatly boosted if they seemed to better understand what Alex Comfort would call the joy of sex.

Alas, for Percy Becker (Andrew Barth Feldman), that understanding is a long way off. “Luckily,” there to nudge it along are what the movie’s summary bills as his “helicopter parents,” Laird (Matthew Broderick) and Allison (Laura Benanti). Though, if we’re venturing out of millennial territory, the more appropriate term for what Gen Z has are lawnmower parents. A breed that, although similar to the hovering-over-every-action helicopter parents, actually goes so far as to mow down every obstacle in their children’s way. Which has been the case for Percy his entire life. This being the driving force behind why they post a Craigslist ad (again, a very millennial medium) seeking a girl in her early to mid-twenties to “date” their son—the running joke of a euphemism that the audience is meant to easily interpret as “fuck.” In other words, they want someone to “date the shit out of” their son so that he’ll finally come out of his shell. The little sexually awkward hermit crab that he is.

At the same time, Maddie Barker’s (Jennifer Lawrence) circumstances have aligned to become the lone “girl” who might take the ad seriously/be up for what it requires (that is to say, actually “opening Percy up”). For, as the movie commences with one of her many exes pulling up to her house in Montauk (because yes, this is the first real “Montauk movie”—unless one counts Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), it’s apparent that things are financially dire. Confirmed by that ex, Gary (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), also happening to be a tow truck driver who has been tasked with repossessing her car.

Freaking out about losing a key source of her additional income (being an Uber driver does, to be sure, require a car), Maddie proceeds to funnel her rage toward the “summer people” that have been ruining Montauk for true locals for decades. And if you were wondering how she herself got her cush abode, it belonged to her mother…who got it, in turn, as a form of “hush property” from Maddie’s absentee father. A man who had an affair with Maddie’s mother while keeping his “real family” in the city. This is the type of complicated quagmire a cocooned, affluent Gen Zer like Percy could never understand. And yet, Maddie goes into the job under the misguided notion that she can treat a member of Gen Z anything close to how she would a millennial. Because, though the years that separate the generations aren’t that many, the divide is vast.

Take, for instance, Maddie’s initial approach to Percy, instructed by his parents to manufacture a “meet cute” with him at the animal shelter where he volunteers. Percy conveniently happens to be holding a wiener dog in his arms so that Maddie can deliver the solid-gold line, “Can I touch your wiener?” Percy is more frazzled than aroused by Maddie’s sexed-up appearance and subtle-as-a-car-crash flirting techniques. And that feeling only intensifies when, in his mind, it seems as though Maddie is trying to kidnap him when she offers to give him a ride home.

Ending up at her house instead, Percy sprays her in the face with pepper spray as she demands, “Why couldn’t you have used your rape whistle instead?” “Why would I have a rape whistle?” he replies. She tells him that the better question is, why would he have mace? The answer, needless to say, is that this lily-livered generation is so afraid of their own shadow, so riddled with the anxieties of potential danger lurking everywhere that of course they wouldn’t leave the house unarmed. If they leave the house at all. Percy certainly never seems to. Until Maddie comes along. Because, quelle surprise, in spite of the mace snafu, Percy is coerced into asking her on a date.

When Maddie arranges for him to meet her at the bar she usually frequents, it results in not only running into yet another one of her “exes” (i.e., flings), but a discussion about what Hall and Oates’ “Maneater” is actually saying. All Percy knows is, the lyrical content terrified him as a child. While he took the description more literally to mean some kind of monster only comes out at night, Maddie breaks it to him that, no, that’s not what the song is about. Though, to be fair, it’s not really about a sexually appetitive woman either, with John Oates explaining that it’s actually about “NYC in the 80s. It’s about greed, avarice, and spoiled riches. But we have it in the setting of a girl because it’s more relatable. It’s something that people can understand.” Unless they’re Percy or any other Gen Z male, who doesn’t know the first thing about how to “activate” a woman (that said, in a pre-Gen Z era of movies, Percy probably would have just been written off as gay as opposed to “emotionally delicate”).

Nonetheless, Maddie performs every cliché trick in the book to entice him, still not yet registering that he needs to be “dealt with” in a manner that speaks his own sexually repressed language. Before Maddie realizes that, she wastes her time seducing him with the millennial classic known as Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” complete with booty-popping that ultimately falls on blind eyes as he comments on how she feels a little heavy on his legs. Although one would think their total lack of sexual chemistry might have put Percy off of Maddie by now (whereas Maddie has no choice but to stay the course if she wants her vehicular compensation), the reality is, she’s the form of connection he’s been craving. Isolating himself from his peers after transferring to a new school in the wake of a nasty rumor about how he has sex with his parents (this snowballing from the fact that he still slept in the same room as them now and again), Percy has deliberately kept his distance from others. Chosen to blend in to avoid being noticed, therefore perceived and judged at all.

Despite Maddie and Percy’s generational divide, this is one thing they can easily relate to with each other: putting up walls to keep anyone from getting too close. Granted, Maddie at least has an age-appropriate best friend named Sarah (Natalie Morales), who comes as a set with her boyfriend/soon-to-be father of her child, Jim (Scott MacArthur). In fact, they’re the ones who urged her to respond to the Craigslist ad in the first place. What with the payment just so happening to be the car replacement she needs to keep working her side hustle (heaven forbid the payment could be actual, real money; rich people, after all, only keep their wealth by not sharing it in any profound way).

By the end of that first date, though, Maddie is wishing she never bothered as she’s forced to take matters into her own hands when a group of teenagers steal their clothes from the beach (somehow, she had managed to convince Percy to go skinny dipping with her). Because, obviously, Percy isn’t going to do a thing to stop them—a point she calls out when he gets “spooked” by how she attacked them while completely naked (this patently being part of a CGI wonder). Berating him for being incapable of taking action or making decisions for himself without the presumed sanction of an “adult” (she reminds him that he’s one, too), she finally tells him that she feels sorry for him. As it is easy to do for a generation that grew up so fundamentally sheltered despite being exposed to just about every depraved thing imaginable through the lens of a screen (read: the internet).

And part of that pity flares up again toward the end of the movie’s second act, as Maddie goes from room to room at a rich person’s house party in search of Percy, seeing that, in each one, the youths are doing nothing more than frittering the time away on their phones or with a VR headset. So frustrated by the sight of such flaccidity (which has been compounded by her weeks spent with Percy), she finally cries out, “Doesn’t anyone fuck anymore?” The answer clearly being a resounding no. Not even in a sex comedy. For, expectedly, when Maddie and Percy finally do “consummate” their relationship, the visual result is even more lackluster than one would expect.

Regardless, No Hard Feelings has been celebrated as an “old-school raunch fest with plenty of laughs.” Yet it’s apparent that the movie isn’t exactly that at all. For it knows it can’t dare to go in the same territory as erstwhile benchmarks of previous raunch comedies like, say, Porky’s. Or even Weird Science and Revenge of the Nerds. All of which focus on male teens at a time when they weren’t all so, well, incel-esque.

As a member of Gen X, Stupnitsky (who cowrote the script with John Phillips) perhaps not only possesses a different layer of objectivity regarding the dynamic between millennials and Gen Zers who are even less physically and emotionally equipped than the former, but also certainly understands the finer points of malaise and suffering (being Ukrainian helps with that, too). All while managing to incorporate sex (or the “suggestion” of it) into that cocktail of growing pains misery. Because sex is what helps keep most people from going completely insane. That is, most people who aren’t part of Gen Z. But the lack of intense interest in it on their part is built into the title—having no hard feelings (a.k.a. erections) because it’s difficult to do that when all feelings whatsoever are numbed out to begin with.

Does No Hard Feelings go to the same lengths of raunch in getting that message across as Fast Times at Ridgemont High or There’s Something About Mary, or even Superbad? No. But such are the fragile Gen Z-geared times we live in.

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Genna Rivieccio

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July 18, 2023
Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Broderick Celebrate 26th Anniversary: ‘Oh The Miles We Have Strolled Together’

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By Brent Furdyk.
Published: 19 mins ago
Last updated: 15 mins ago

Sarah Jessica Parker and husband Matthew Broderick celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary in style.

The “And Just Like That” star took to Instagram to share a photo of the cork from a champagne bottle, and a sweet tribute to her husband of almost three decades.

“Happy 26th anniversary my husband,” Parker wrote in the caption.

READ MORE:
Sarah Jessica Parker And Matthew Broderick Have Family Date Night At ‘Hocus Pocus 2’ Premiere

“That sure was a nice celebration and a real nice bottle of champagne. And a gorgeous walk home,” she added.

“Oh the miles we have strolled together,” she wrote, concluding with, “I love you. XOX, your SJ.”

Both Broderick and Parker have remained fiercely private when it’s come to discussing their marriage, but back in 2020, Broderick opened up about his spouse during an appearance on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM radio show.

READ MORE:
Matthew Broderick Opens Up About His 23-Year Marriage To Sarah Jessica Parker

“I don’t know the, the, the secret at all, but I, you know, but I’m very grateful and I love her and, it’s amazing,
he said of SJP.

“I mean, I can’t believe that it’s been that long,” he added. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDph0zorMPU

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Brent Furdyk

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May 21, 2023
Cameron Frye and Connor Roy: “My Old Man Pushes Me Around” No More!

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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.

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Genna Rivieccio

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April 11, 2023