‘Succession’ director Andrij Parekh on ‘America Decides’: ‘I was completely terrified’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

Christopher Rosen
·5 min read
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Prior to the broadcast premiere of “Succession” Season 4 – before the show’s fans were stunned when Logan Roy (Emmy nominee Brian Cox) died in the third episode, “Connor’s Wedding” – creator Jesse Armstrong said he felt episode eight, “America Decides,” was the most shocking of the entire season. For the episode’s director Andrij Parekh, however, it wasn’t the plot machinations that left him surprised, but the challenges of putting together an Election Night in the world of the Roy family.

“When I got the episode synopsis from Jesse, and then the scripts, I was completely terrified. Because you realize that it’s an episode within an episode,” Parekh tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. “I just read it and realized how much material we were going to have to shoot to make it feel like a real election night and how much we’d have to prepare in advance to make it feel seamless. No blue screen was used at all for anything that was on the televisions within ATN. So that was all prepared ahead of time. So I guess my mind immediately, as a director – after, of course, being excited about the script – went into logistics mode, and how we’re going to make this work. It was quite an adventure.”

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Fortunately for Parekh, the work paid off. Not only does “America Decides” rate as one of the season’s best episodes, but it also landed Parekh among the Emmy nominees for drama series directing, alongside fellow “Succession” filmmakers Mark Mylod (“Connor’s Wedding”) and Lorene Scafaria (“Living+”). This is the second Emmy nomination Parekh received for the acclaimed series, winning previously for the Season 2 episode “Hunting.” 

“The writing of ‘Succession’ rides that razor-thin edge of comedy and drama,” Parekh says of the series. In “America Decides,” a fraught episode that for many recalled election night in 2016, is a good example of the show’s strengths. Amid the drama about the fate of the republic and the sibling rivalry between the Roys, “America Decides” includes laugh-out-loud comedy moments – such as when the ATN election pollster, Darwin (guest star Adam Godley), inadvertently gets wasabi from leftover bodega sushi in his eyes and Greg (Nicholas Braun) tries to wash it out with a lemon-flavored La Croix. Shouts Greg at one point as Darwin moans in agony, “It’s just a hint of lemon.”

“The rule for myself always was that if I’m laughing at the monitor, then we’ve gone too far,” Parekh says of the sequence. “Because we can create the joke that with dramatic tension and editing, but when it goes too far, it’s gone too far.”

With “the wasabi thing,” Parekh adds, “it had to be real. It had to be possible. That was the criteria for me – this has to be something that could happen that evening. So how are we going to orchestrate this? How are we going to plant this in a way that it seems innocuous? Just eating the bodega sushi that Greg offered Tom [Emmy nominee and past winner Matthew Macfadyen] earlier in the episode and that Tom rejects. Which is perfectly Greg. So it was really just orchestrating things for it to be real and dramatic as opposed to comedic.”

SEEAlan Ruck interview: ‘Succession’

“Succession” debuted in June of 2018, but the pilot episode was shot in late 2016, around the contentious presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Parekh says some of the tension in “America Decides” – which ends with the Roys all but electing a far-right fascist as the next President of the United States – has its origins in an election night party held by executive producer Adam McKay.

“It started out great. Everyone was having drinks, and everyone was being optimistic,” Parekh says. “Then Adam would be getting these texts and then 20 minutes later, we would see it on the television. So you suddenly understood how news works, right? So it was really they trying to recall that emotional feeling of that election night for me, and I think for a number of people. The anxiety of it and the horror of the outcome.”

In looking back on why “Succession” struck such a chord over its four seasons, Parekh highlights 2016 as a partial driver for its acclaimed run.

“I think that the show owes its success to the 2016 election, and having Fox News become so powerful and such a voice in media,” he says. “I think what ‘Succession’ did really well was it sort of illustrated the quid pro quo of American politics and media, where the political world needs the media, but the media then also needs the politics – and they just feed each other in a little bit of a tragic way.”

“America Decides” and all episodes of “Succession” are streaming on Max. “Succession” received 27 total Emmy nominations this year.

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