Succession's Jeremy Strong gives his view on stunning finale

It was one hell of a rollercoaster end but series star Jeremy Strong (who plays Kendall Roy) has revealed that, actually, he thinks things could have turned out very differently for his character.

Speaking to Vanity Fair about the ending of Succession, Strong was asked about the last scene where we see him leave the offices after the deal goes through and walk to the river with Colin behind him.

He sits down and looks despondently at the horizon, but Strong admits that he felt a "calling" for something more dramatic for his character.

He explains: "That day, we were shooting down in Battery Park, and it was the coldest day in like, a century in New York. One of those days in February that they'd closed schools. I'd never been so cold in my whole life...

"I found myself thinking about the ninth circle of hell, which in Dante's Inferno is a frozen lake. The worst part of hell is ice cold, and so that scene became about that. It was so cold. It was almost burning."

He continues: "As scripted, it was meant to end with an aerial shot where we see Kendall walking, and we see Colin following him.

"I begged [creator Jesse Armstrong and director Mark Mylod], 'Can we go to the water? I want to keep walking.' We ended up at the bitter end of Battery Park, facing the water. I'd never seen waves like that in the East River. It felt biblical. And there was this terrible clanging on some scaffolding nearby.

"We didn't know what we were looking for, but something profound happened. We only had about eight minutes to shoot that piece at the end because the sun was going down. The water was calling to me. It felt right to all of us."

Explaining his logic about the water, he says: "Listen to the John Berryman poem that Jesse has named these finales after. John Berryman himself died by suicide, jumping into the frozen river.

"I tried to go into the water after we cut – I got up from that bench and went as fast as I could over the barrier and onto the pilings, and the actor playing Colin raced over.

"I didn't know I was gonna do that, and he didn't know, but he raced over and stopped me. I don't know whether in that moment I felt that Kendall just wanted to die – I think he did – or if he wanted to be saved by essentially a proxy of his father."

Strong continued: "To me, what happens at the board vote is an extinction level event for this character. There's no coming back from that.

"But what I love about the way Jesse chose to end it, it’s a much stronger ending philosophically, and has more integrity to what Jesse's overall very bleak vision is of mankind - which is that, fundamentally, people don't really change. They don't do the spectacular, dramatic thing.

"Instead, there's a kind of doom loop that we're all stuck in, and Kendall is trapped in this sort of silent scream with Colin there as both a bodyguard and a jailer."

He added: "I also don't know if [Kendall] would've had the courage to actually go in that water, because my God, it would've been hard to do. But I think you even feel on a cellular level the intention or the longing to cross that threshold. The way [Armstrong] leaves us with a kind of ambivalence stays true to his vision."

While a Kendall death would've certainly plummeted the series finale to another dramatic dimension, it's safe to say that showrunner Jesse Armstrong believes that the series ended in the way it was always supposed to.

In the Controlling The Narrative featurette (via Deadline) which aired after the finale, Armstrong admitted: “Tom being the eventual successor, that had been something that I thought was the right ending for quite a while.

“Even though he’s not exactly the most powerful monarch you’ll ever meet, his power comes from Matsson. Those figures who drift upwards and make themselves amenable to powerful people are around.”

Read More

• Succession creator says show’s ending is "hopefully a bit surprising"
• Brian Cox claims that he was written out of Succession "too early"
• Succession season 4 featured surprise cameo from Brian Cox's wife
• Succession fans predict Kendall Roy will be the ultimate winner
• Succession star claims there were "three different ideas" for a fifth season
• Succession star Sarah Snook says season 4 ending is "somewhat ambiguous"
• Succession's Matthew Macfadyen teases show ending: "It works"

Succession airs on Sky Atlantic and NOW with all seasons available to watch on Sky and stream on NOW – sign up for Sky TV here.

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