Justine Lupe on the Ride of ‘Succession’ Season 3 and What Comes Next
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Justine Lupe doesn’t want to label any “Succession” fan theories as crazy, as that would seemingly confirm or deny their truth, but as part of the cast of the mega-popular HBO show, she’s seen her fair share of ideas online.
“There was one that I heard that was kind of outlandish, that was that Gerri throws everyone under, and I guess that she has this relationship with this new guy and this new guy is going to help her kind of take down the company, which I was like, ‘oh, that’s wild. Wow, that would be a lot of getting to know a new boyfriend who we’ve barely met,’” Lupe says. “‘We would have to cover a lot of territory.’”
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Lupe, who plays Conner’s girlfriend Willa, a struggling playwright, has been on the show since season one but the current season, which wraps today, was her first as series regular. The experience has afforded her the ability to both be a fan of the show and know when theories are preposterous, with insider knowledge.
“It’s been really fun to know what happens,” she says. “I’ve watched the show, obviously, and am a fan of the show and the experience of watching is so different from shooting that I feel like I get equally swept into it – but it’s been really fun.”
For the most part, fans seem drawn to her character Willa, which is heartwarming – she’s quite the Willa fan herself.
“I’m very endeared to Willa,” Lupe says. “I think she’s pretty complex. I like the level of delusion that she has, the level of pride that she has. I like her trajectory, the way that she’s pretty vulnerable in the last season with this play going completely off the track. And I love her relentlessness of getting back on the horse. In the episode where they pick the next president and she’s sitting there writing on her phone, I just love that she’s kind of right back in the saddle. And I love the level of zero f–ks that she gives in terms of the way that she’s floated into this family and has been the black sheep of the family and made her way into the family in spite of that, partially because she doesn’t quite play into the power dynamics that are set for the rest of the family. She doesn’t quite play by the same rules, I’d say. She seems a little untouched by the same structure that the rest of the siblings are part of.”
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Lupe, a native of Denver, grew up play acting at home with her brother, writing scenes and casting her brother in various roles (“he was a kind of unwilling participant,” she jokes). From there she auditioned for the Denver School of the Arts, which is a magnet program for kids with interests across the arts, and she eventually found her way to Juilliard.
“It’s been a lot of commitment to it,” she says. “It’s been a long road.”
Lupe will go from playing Willa to “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” in two very different roles, and is known also for roles on “Younger” and “Mr Mercedes,” all with quite the range between them. In “Maisel,” she is sister-in-law to Midge, but due to the “Succession” requirements was only able to shoot one episode. Her next big role, however, is starring alongside Mila Kunis in the film adaptation of the hit book “The Luckiest Girl Alive,” which drew comparisons to “The Girl on the Train” and “Gone Girl” at time of publication.
“I started out the process a little intimidated because we’re supposed to play best friends,” she says of working alongside Kunis. “I was a little bit nervous because she’s such a star and that it might be a little bit hard to create that intimate relationship, but it was incredibly seamless and she was just so receptive in terms of anything goes. She was very warm, and it felt like a very safe place for us to play around with that very close friendship dynamic.”
Like “Succession,” the project featured the original writer on set every day (in this case the novel’s author Jessica Knoll).
“Both with ‘Succession’ and with ‘Luckiest Girl Alive,’ it’s kind of amazing to have the writer just there for every single step. If you run into any kind of roadblocks in terms of trying to understand the character or understand the scene or what your function within the scene is, there’s no running through walls because you have someone there who’s created it and can help work through everything,” she says. “It was such a dream.”
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