‘Succession’: Why Kendall Is Wearing a Flashy Richard Mille Watch and Cousin Greg Rocks a Rolex “Pepsi” GMT
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Kendall Roy’s new watch on the latest and final season of Succession is hardly a quiet luxury.
The Roy scion — who on earlier seasons favored timepieces by more traditional makers like Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe — is now rocking a much flashier item on his wrist: a sporty RM 67-01 by Richard Mille that qualifies as a ten-table watch (meaning a watch that’s ostentatious enough to be noticeable by people 10 tables away at a restaurant).
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The watch is hardly there by mistake. Its presence signals the new chapter in Kendall’s life as he and brother Roman take the reins of their father’s company, and it was personally chosen by actor Jeremy Strong after an exec at Richard Mille sent it to him. “Those are all things that I do on my own because those details just feel really important to me, and so I take initiative in that area,” Strong told GQ last February, regarding his wardrobe choices for the character. (Among the ambassadors of Richard Mille is Michelle Yeoh, who donned a diamond-covered RM 07-02 Sapphire watch to the 2023 Academy Awards where she won the Oscar for best actress.)
Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) is sporting a new watch as well on season four, a choice that Danny Milton, managing editor of the watch news website Hodinkee, consulted on. “Cousin Greg, I think, is everyone’s sort of favorite character,” Milton tells The Hollywood Reporter, “and through a few conversations we ended up giving him a Rolex GMT ‘Pepsi’ on a Jubilee bracelet, the modern ‘Pepsi’ GMT.” Greg’s new timepiece is a follow-up to the Rolex he bought at a party at an overinflated price in a previous season. “I think one of the coolest Rolex watches in existence right now is that Jubilee ‘Pepsi’ Rolex,” adds Milton. “It just strikes me as Greg possibly leveling up. He’s the kind of guy who has gone from blindly buying a Rolex to actively understanding what he wants — that’s kind of the thinking behind it.”
Costume designers on films and television shows don’t generally choose the watches seen onscreen. “Watches fall under the prop master’s purview,” explains Milton. “Everything that anyone can touch onscreen is put there by the prop master or their team, and that’s not a role that gets recognition at the Oscars. They’re unsung heroes.”
On Succession, the job of choosing the watches falls to prop master Monica Jacobs. She recently told Esquire that she’s been flattered by how much attention is paid to what the show’s characters are wearing on their wrists, even to the point of the watch-collecting community calling out what’s seen in paparazzi shots taken during filming. “I started seeing so many [people] that were only excited by the watch. Like, ‘Oh my god, we saw Tom walking out filming, and he’s wearing the Audemars!’ That’s what they’re looking at? It’s pretty exciting, to be like, I did that,” said Jacobs.
For this season of Succession, Milton also worked with Jacobs on choosing watches for the PR duo of Carolina (Dagmara Dominczyk) and Hugo (Fisher Stevens). Hugo wears a Panerai Radiomir, while Carolina can be spotted with “a vintage Vacheron Constantin,” says Milton. “It’s an asymmetrical watch from the ’70s with a Roman numeral dial. It’s really cool.” Over the course of the show, devoted watch spotters have also chronicled that Logan Roy has worn such timepieces as a Breguet Classique and a Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous, while Shiv Roy mostly wears Cartier Panthères and Pashas and Roman Roy favors Rolexes (though he was recently seen in an IWC Pilot’s Watch Mark XX (which retails for $6,150)
Milton writes Hodinkee’s regular “Watching Movies” column (among other stories on the website), in which he chronicles timepieces spotted in films, such as Ke Huy Quan’s Casio in Everything Everywhere All at Once and Daniel Craig’s Omega Seamaster in Glass Onion.
He’s also consulted on watches seen in Confess, Fletch (a Rolex Daytona 1680 sourced from Hodinkee’s vintage store, worn by Jon Hamm), and on the upcoming season two of And Just Like That. For the latter, he says, “We recently were able to source a vintage Speedmaster for one of the love interests on the show. We went with a watch that had a lot of patina and a lot of character. It looks like a well-loved, well-worn kind of watch.”
Milton also talks with THR about his personal favorite timepieces that he saw at the recent Watches & Wonders fair in Geneva, Switzerland, and names his fave movie watch ever.
Milton’s Favorite Watch in a Film
“My all-time favorite movie watch is a watch that’s been in multiple movies,” says Milton. “It is a Rolex Red Submariner reference 1680 that was famously Robert Redford’s personal watch, and he wore it in at least three films: The Candidate, All the President’s Men and The Electric Horseman. That’s sort of the Red Submariner trilogy. What’s great about that watch is it’s his watch, but he’s always prominently wearing it. And I don’t know this for sure, but he still owns the watch. It’s one of those ones I’m waiting for it to surface. I imagine at some point, knowing his philanthropic endeavors, that it would be something that would hit an auction block at some point. It’s one of those legendary watches for me.”
Spotting an Anachronistic Movie Watch
“The Big Short is a funny film because it takes place at the time of the 2007-2008 economic crisis. But in the film, Steve Carell’s character wears a ceramic Submariner, and those watches didn’t exist yet. It’s one of those movies where when if you love watches, it can distract you a bit, you know, from what you’re seeing. That watch does get some good screen time. It’s kinda in your face.”
Famously Unidentifiable Movie Watches
Asked to name an onscreen watch that bedevils watch spotters to this day, Milton names the timepiece that Humphrey Bogart wears in Casablanca. “You can pause that film all you want,” he says and still not be able to identify it. Milton believes the legendary star was wearing one of three watches in the film. “It’s either two types of Longines or possibly it’s a Lord Elgin. It’s obviously not a circular watch. It’s square or curved in some way. There’s a very high likelihood that it was [Bogart’s] watch … that he walked into Warner Bros. with his Longines on his wrist and, you know, never took it off.”
Milton is also interested in nailing exactly which black watch Dustin Hoffman wore in 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer but admits that the answer so far has eluded him. “I’m a ’70s movie nut and any movie from that era really speaks to me,” says Milton. “He’s wearing what we think is a LeJour chronograph in black PVD. But there were a ton of brands producing black PVD from Heuer to LeJour to Porsche Design. So it’s really difficult to narrow it down even though we think that we got pretty close.”
Milton’s Picks of the Best New Watches of 2023
“A big favorite of mine was the gold GMT from Rolex on the Jubilee bracelet just because they have not done the gold Jubilee since the ’80s and ’90s really. I love what TAG Heuer did this year. They are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Carrera, and they came out with a 39mm chronograph that’s a refreshed redesign of one of their core models. It’s compact, and I love it. It feels like I’m wearing a vintage watch on my wrist, but when I look at it, it still has that feel of a robust modern watch,” shares Milton.
He also notes the number of watch brands that debuted timepieces in smaller diameters this year. “Panerai released an entire line of 40mm Radiomir watches. As someone who has kind of smaller wrists, that’s a much more appealing offering to me. [And] Tudor released a 37mm Black Bay 54 this year which is a watch I think nobody asked for or knew they wanted. And all of a sudden, we’re all putting it on our wrists and saying, ‘Whoa, a 37mm watch based on a heritage diver of the past. It’s amazing.'”
Another trend? Salmon-dial watches. “Salmon dials are having a serious moment. This year, you saw Bulgari do one, while the Chopard Alpine Eagle with the L.U.C. movement inside, and the salmon dial is a really beautiful piece.”
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