‘Succession’ star Jeremy Strong: Kendall finally got his ‘Dracarys moment’

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The following piece contains spoilers about “Succession” Season 4, Episode 9, “Church and State”

While speaking about Sunday’s episode of “Succession,” star and Emmy Award-winner Jeremy Strong made a direct connection between the season-long arc for his character, Kendall Roy, and another HBO drama favorite.

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“It’s kind of like a Dracarys moment for Kendall,” Strong said on the “Succession” podcast, referencing “Game of Thrones” and its Mad Queen, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke). “Starting from the end of episode six, really, I think he can see the endgame. A lot of things happen in the ninth episode. Him feeling blamed for the election and his culpability in making this kind of Faustian bargain, really, he’s compromised himself utterly, and he knows it. I think he’s in turmoil. The real moral jeopardy that we see in the previous episode.”

Much has happened to Kendall since the death of his father, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), in episode three. After spending most of the series in Logan’s shadow or under his thumb – and having failed to leave the family business on his own terms at the end of Season 3 – Kendall was given a new life upon seeing a document left behind by Logan that listed his son as a possible replacement. The paper, revealed in the fourth episode, had no legal standing and whether Kendall’s name was underlined or crossed out remains up for debate. But with that boost of confidence, Kendall has operated on a higher level this season. He sought to kill the deal to sell Waystar Royco to Gojo and Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard), first by aligning with Shiv (Sarah Snook) and his co-CEO, Roman (Kieran Culkin). But now, after Shiv double-crossed her brothers by making her own moves with Matsson and Roman overplayed his hand with a questionable embrace of far-right fascism that failed to secure the Roy family the juice it needed to stop the sale, Kendall is angling for the top job by himself. As he says in the series finale teaser, the goal is for the family to remain in control of Logan’s legacy with a single king on the throne.

Whether “Succession” puts Kendall in the pole position as it comes to an end – an outcome that would pay off the show’s opening moments when it seemed like Kendall was ready to succeed his dad – is unclear. But the final season has provided Kendall and Strong with a number of key moments to shine, including his impromptu eulogy for Logan during Sunday’s “Church and State” episode.

“It’s a wonderful moment for Kendall, I think, to get to what he sees as speaking the truth. We’ve seen him in episode six, in the Living+ presentation, there’s a certain kind of grandiosity in his public speaking and he sometimes rises to the occasion, in a character that we’ve seen so often miss the mark,” Strong said on the “Succession” podcast. In the penultimate episode, Kendall is tasked to deliver the eulogy for Logan after Roman breaks down – but Kendall must follow a speech by Logan’s brother, Ewan (James Cromwell), that lays bare the Roy patriarch’s ugly legacy. 

“Because he hasn’t prepared for it and he hadn’t planned to do it — which he probably would have agonized over, and the prepared version, like all of us, might have been not as good — there was something about the gauntlet that had been thrown down by Ewan denigrating [Logan’s] memory,” Strong said. “But also, it’s a beautiful piece of writing by [creator] Jesse [Armstrong] that I had very little time to learn (laughing), but that Kendall acknowledges that his father was a brute. That a lot of what Ewan said is true and that he himself has said it; he called him a malignant presence in the end of season two. But I think you see through Kendall’s eyes his reverence for his father. And I think it’s so important that we see it’s not about market cap, it’s about the life force of the man and the things that he wrought.”

Sunday’s episode was another huge one for Culkin as well – providing the actor with numerous opportunities to showcase his vulnerability and emotional range.

“This was the only season where I indulged Jesse in letting him tell me what was going to happen with Roman,” Culkin told Vanity Fair in an interview published Sunday night. “In the past, I liked not knowing [until getting the script]. I’m not sure why, but I wanted to know more this year. He mentioned that [scene] early, and I wasn’t sure if it was a full breakdown, but he basically said, ‘You get positioned to be the guy, and you shoot yourself in the foot by just being a human being.’”

“The hinge of the episode, really, is Roman shitting the bed in his speech and then Kendall taking the mantle, and it’s another triumph,” Strong said of how Roman’s human response impacted the story. “He’s moving from strength to strength, in a sense, and the room feels it. They joke about the ‘coronation demolition derby,’ but it is his father’s funeral and simultaneously Kendall’s coronation. I leave that church, and there’s been a profound transformation from the way I walked into that church to the way I leave that church.”

Sunday’s episode ended with a conversation between Kendall and Roman unlike many they’ve had before. Rather than provide Roman with some relief, Kendall goes in for the kill. “You fucked it,” he tells his grieving brother, an observation that would be hard to argue against.

“Jeremy and I are both in that camp of, ‘Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not rehearse it. Let’s just see what happens,’” Culkin said of the sequence. “I remember feeling like, I’m sitting there and no one is talking to me because no one knows what to say. And he comes over and, for a moment, it’s like, ‘Okay, good. I know I’m not going to get a nice warm hug exactly, but here comes my brother, and he’s going to give me some sort of nice words.’ Then he says in this matter-of-fact way that I’ve just let everyone down.”

Culkin added, “I remember trying to jump in because I actually didn’t want to hear what he had to say to me.”

The final episode of “Succession” airs Sunday.

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