The ‘Succession’ Kill List Contest Could’ve Been a Lot More Like ‘The Hunger Games’
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This post contains spoilers for this week’s episode of Succession, “Kill List.”
On Sunday night’s Succession, Kendall and Roman goofed their way into a deal to sell Waystar RoyCo for a price that only someone who is definitely not a serious person would refuse. Meanwhile, the rest of the company’s high-ranking personnel found themselves squaring up with their counterparts at GoJo, leading to a lot of awkward, corporate pissing contests that actually could’ve been a whole lot more Hunger Games-esque.
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J. Smith-Cameron, who plays Waystar RoyCo’s indomitable general counsel Gerri Kellman, told Variety’s “Still Watching” podcast that there were several scenes filmed for last night’s episode that didn’t make the final cut. That included a bunch of sequences that might’ve helped show what Gerri, Karolina (Dagmara Domińczyk), and Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) did to keep themselves off GoJo’s post-merger “kill list.” (Check out Rolling Stone’s full recap here.)
“There was a whole Hunger Games aspect to the executives trying to keep their spots,” Smith-Cameron explained. “They were supposed to be competing against the Swedes, who are athletic and savvy about everything.”
According to Smith-Cameron, loyal viewers were deprived of watching Hugo (Fisher Stevens) and Ray (Patch Darragh) try to ford stream, or Gerri foraging for mushrooms. (Release the tapes, HBO!) The one scene that sorta made it into the episode was the sauna sequence.
“It was this proof of who could stick out the heat,” Smith-Cameron explained, “who could take it… the first one to leave gets cut, kind of thing. And so I said, maybe Gerri could be in the sauna with them, even though it’s all guys. And they thought that idea was funny. So I was in there and they gave me some nice lines. At one point, [creator] Jesse [Armstrong] said, ‘Why don’t you say, “Hey it’s getting a little cool in here, can’t you turn it up?”’ And everybody laughed and I was like, ‘This is gonna be a great scene!’ And now we’re just an out of focus shot where Karl and Frank are sitting on a deck, not having to put themselves through that.”
Of course, Frank (Peter Friedman) and Karl (David Rasche) are very much on the kill list at the end of the episode, so jokes on them (as it so often is).
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