Note: This story contains spoilers from “Succession” Season 4.
Sunday’s episode of “Succession” brought viewers back to business as the Roy family is tasked with moving forward after last week’s shocking twist.
The episode, titled “Honeymoon States,” follows Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) as they navigate overseeing the business following the death of their father Logan (Brian Cox). By the end of the episode, Kendall and Roman are named co-CEOs, following much debate with their sister as well as Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), Frank (Peter Friedman) and Karl (David Rasche).
TheWrap spoke with Smith-Cameron about her character and the popular HBO drama’s final season:
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
TheWrap: What was your reaction to learning about Logan’s death? How did you find out he was going to die?
Smith-Cameron: They told us in shifts for some reason very privately. We weren’t just telling anyone, of course, about it and we were all shocked. But more shocked at the timing of it than the fact of it. From the very first episode, the idea was [Logan is] on the precipice of death. That’s the whole idea. People don’t realize this because I think Jesse [Armstrong] and co. don’t put too fine a point on this. But the action of the story is pretty concise. Basically, the story has only been going on about a year since his stroke from Season 1. We have Thanksgiving in Season 1 and this year there’s an election coming up. So it’s about a year that has passed. So [Logan’s] really been in and out of good health and had a serious stroke, which is what poses the whole question of succession. But as viewers, and us certainly as actors and writers in the show, you get lost to that fact because first of all, Logan and Brian Cox are so formidable and so present and such a driving force that it’s really hard to picture the show without him. So we were both shocked and not shocked. But what was shocking about it was the timing of it, I think, to have it relatively early in the season, but not right at the beginning.
The whole way it happened is just how those things happen in life. Half of us are stranded in the air, half of us are stranded at sea. There’s this chaotic confusion, they’re trying to figure out by cell phone what’s going on and it’s not clear what’s going on and people are in denial about it. Also he’s not awake for it, the Logan character is out. Some people would have had a big death scene or something, but there’s not. It’s this weird blunt sort of horrible death, there’s not that much warning and there’s not that much fanfare and you can’t kind of get your questions answers and it’s awful. It’s just exactly how those things happen when you get a phone call.
So I think it’s really brilliant and I think we were all like, ‘that’s cool’, though it would be hard to imagine the show without Brian Cox because I’ve always gone around saying, “gosh, I don’t know what the show would be without him” because he drives it so much. But it was more that the timing of it was so alarming to me, like how would the rest of the season be like?
Also they weren’t completely clear that it was the last season. Jesse might have known in his heart, but they weren’t really clear with us. What Jesse told me a number of times is “it’s such an excellent experience that I’m really open to the idea of an extra season. I’d like to see how it goes or maybe something later or something. But I feel like this could be the last season and probably should be the last season.” So we kind of knew it, but we didn’t know it, which was painful in a way.
Sunday’s episode finds everyone arguing over who should be named interim CEO. How much of the comedy in this week’s episode was scripted vs. improv?
It was very much written. Jesse is this raving genius, but his whole staff is too. The [“Oh, you’re sick with grief? You might want to put down that fish taco. You’re getting your melancholy everywhere” line] was very much a written line. And as I recall, I think the whole thing was, but it was really fun because we huddled in that butler’s pantry room and just the dynamic of that while the whole wake is going on in the rest of the apartment. Not only are the siblings jockeying for power in their own horrible, deadly serious way, but then even this so-called old guard is being horrible to each other. I just thought that was really beautifully written comic relief.
Also, just the fact that they find this document and is it underlined or struck out. It’s just the barest hint that means anything at all. Like Gerri says, ‘It’s a doodle. We just felt obligated to tell you it doesn’t do anything and it doesn’t hold any water legally anyway. So everyone shut up.’ It’s so brilliantly funny…the fact that they’re deciphering this document from who knows when that’s in pencil, that’s not witnessed, that’s completely ambiguous and that Kendall takes and runs with, it is so just absurdly funny in a horrible way. I just think it’s so clever that they all went to the trouble of going to this inner sanctum library room but they just keep getting an influx of new people who don’t belong there to have their secret meeting.
When Frank and Carl initially find the letter, they mention that they aren’t going to let the “little princess” spoil their plans. What do you think of speculation that it may have been Shiv’s name originally on the letter?
I didn’t get that at all. I don’t even remember the little princess reference. But I do think what’s brilliantly written about that is how they’re all so careful not to be the one who wants to seriously say “let’s just get rid of this,” let’s just make it go away. Every time they’re like that would be really funny, they just say it so deadly serious.
How does Gerri feel about Kendall and Roman being named co-CEOs of the company, given that she’s previously held the interim CEO role?
First of all, she got them out of trouble, she kept them all out of prison and it is just like them to be like, “We don’t like the way you handled that, we had to pay too much money, it takes too much time” this, that or the other thing and it’s just so ironic. I think that one of the brilliant things about it, I don’t know how this turned out that way, but the fact that it’s so ambiguous who fired whom and what was really meant. No one’s status is clear, but especially Gerri, and I think that’s just, from a dramaturgical standpoint, it seems really cool to me because she’s always in my mind at least always been the one who’s just artfully dodged getting fired. She’s always just stepping out of harm’s way very artfully.
Even on the day of his death, she kind of evades getting fired but she’s adrift. I think it’s safe to say she’s not really on terra firma for the whole season. But everyone is on and off, up and down. It’s one of the reasons I think it’s an incredible season. You can cut the tension with a knife because everyone’s in peril, no one is on terra firma the whole time, even Gerri. It’s part of what keeps the tension and suspense going throughout the season.
What were your favorite moments to shoot as Gerri over the course of the series?
It goes without saying that I’ve loved working on all the scenes with Kieran. I feel like that has emerged as being the most intimate or personal part of Gerri that we ever get to see. But I’ve also always really loved the business scenes where I have really delivered exposition about what’s going to happen if we do this or don’t do that. I’ve loved it because there’s this texture of trying to manage the fates outside of like maybe trying to manage the feds or trying to manage the market, but also trying to manage Logan and trying to manage Roman. Gerri has these scenes like just when we get back from Croatia and that news hits that we’re in trouble and we’re in the vans at the little small airport and I’m talking to Michelle Ann in Washington and it’s so nerve-wracking, and I’m trying to manage Logan and manage her and just that kind of thinking on her feet energy that Gerri has.
Also what comes to mind are ensemble moments, when we’ve all been together, when things have just been so hilarious or so tense or both at the same moment that you feel like you are gonna laugh. There’s some scenes that didn’t make it into last night that I remember just like having to hold my hand over my mouth so that I wouldn’t laugh at Matthew Macfadyen or Nicholas Braun or whoever.
The episode of the board meeting in Season 3 where Logan has a UTI and is hallucinating about the cat under the seat, and there’s so much at stake and they have to pretend to put the invisible cat in the bag and take it out. We were all like biting the inside of our mouths to not laugh … I don’t know how the show managed to walk this line of absurd humor and real suspense and drama at the same time, but I have these memories of almost having to turn away so that I wouldn’t accidentally laugh on camera.
What will you miss about getting to play Gerri?
[She’s] this complicated character who is oddly, extremely adept and skillful at her job but, as I’ve said before, sort of a nervous wreck. She’s constantly fueled by maybe her anxiety but she’s kind of like very tightly wound. Getting to play someone who’s constantly turning and using her mental energy has been someone I’ve always wanted to play. I love those kind of characters that are working things out and puzzling things out.
What can you tease about the remainder of the final season?
I think that the real triumph of this season is that things keep morphing and changing, and the power keeps shifting and the tension is somehow sustaining even without Logan Roy’s presence.
“Succession” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max.
