Succession star Jeremy Strong has revealed that the final scene of the iconic HBO show, could have been different.
Strong, 44, told Anderson Cooper during an interview on Tuesday night, his first since the show ended, that rather than just have his character stand at the water’s edge in New York City’s Battery Park, he tried to go into the water.
‘I did try and go in the water. One of the incredible things about working on something for seven years… is your instincts for the thing become apart of you and are very alive. Your job is to give the writing heart and a nerve and all that stuff,’ Strong said on AC360.
The final scene of the show Strong’s character, Kendall Roy, coming to terms with the fact that he will never inherit his father’s media empire after a board vote went against him.
Strong went on to say that it was not for him to say how the show was going to end. ‘It’s for Jesse Armstrong, there but for the grace of him went all of us this whole time, and his writing, and the depth of it, and his insight into human nature, he feels that people are doomed to repeat themselves,’ the Boston native said.
Succession star Jeremy Strong gave his first televised interview Tuesday night on AC360 with Anderson Cooper
Strong explained that there was alternate ending to the show’s now-iconic finale that was nearly filmed
The show’s final scene sees a contemplative Kendall Roy being forced to come to terms with the fact that he will never be the CEO of his father’s company
The whopping 88-minute finale on Sunday evening, which concluded the hit series chronicling a billionaire media mogul and his children’s struggles to take over the family company, Waystar Royco, left viewers reeling — because none of the Roy siblings won.
In the episode, Shiv Roy took one final turn against her brother Kendall, blowing up his plans to keep their late father’s company and become CEO by voting to let their media empire be acquired by a Swedish tech giant, GoJo.
Strong described his sister siding with her husband ultimately as a ‘capitulation’ of her character in allowing the ‘patriarchy’ to run out victorious.
Strong said in a separate interview with the New York Times that the final scene was shot during winter in Battery Park earlier this year.
‘I’ve never been so cold in my life. What was happening was like the ninth circle of hell, which is frozen. I couldn’t feel anything,’ he said.
The star didn’t specifically say that the temperature prevented them from shooting the final scene with him in the water.
‘I did try and go in the water. We’ve seen Kendall lose again and again and again, but this feels catastrophic,’ he added.
It’s pointed out in the Times piece how significant water is in the character’s life, from the drowning of a waiter at his sister’s wedding, to being in the water when his siblings tell him they will support his bid to be CEO.
‘He’s always in a place where he might lift off out of it, or he might be submerged and drown in it. He’s treading water for his life,’ Strong added.
Celebrate: Just hours after the explosive Succession series finale aired on HBO, one of the show’s crew members shared how star Jeremy Strong celebrated: by getting his head shaved by his on-screen siblings.
Unlike the fictional character, the ending of the show was much more celebratory for Strong.
Just hours after the final episode aired, Strong could be seen in a social media video getting his head shaved by his on-screen brother, Roman, aka Kieran Culkin.
He tells their co-star Sarah Snook, 35, who plays Shiv Roy, to, ‘get in there,’ and passes the clippers to her as she starts shaving the sides and the back of his head.
The clippers are then passed around to several other crew members, as one man named Joe asks, ‘Can I get in there?’
Culkin tells Strong to turn around and look in the mirror, as he sees the top of his head cleanly shaved as he laughs.
Strong replies, ‘Yeah get in there! Anybody can get a crack,’ as Joe passes the clipper to Strong, who passes it to a female crew member.
Strong then asks Culkin, ‘Can I shave your head?’ but he emphatically responds, ‘No!’ as the room breaks into laughter.
Snook is seen shaving the right side of Strong’s head when Culkin pulls out an egg and smashes it on Strong’s nearly-bald head, which Snook was not expecting.
Strong takes the clippers from a stunned Snook as Culkin wipes some of the egg on her face before they both hug, before someone smashes an egg on Culkin’s head.
The show debuted in 2018 and has won a total of 13 Primetime Emmy Awards for its first three seasons.
The show has won Outstanding Drama Series for two of its three seasons, and will likely be a top contender for this year’s Emmy Awards as well.
Strong has signed on to play a man who tries to expose water contamination in a Norwegian spa town in Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play ‘An Enemy of the People.’
The play — with a rewrite from Amy Herzog, whose adaptation of Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ just won a Tony nomination — will premiere on Broadway in early 2024 at a theater to be revealed later, producers said.
The rest of the cast will be announced later. Sam Gold, who won a Tony directing ‘Fun Home,’ will helm the revival.
It will be Strong’s second time on Broadway. He was in ‘A Man for All Seasons’ in 2008 with Frank Langella and Patrick Page. Since then, his work on ‘Succession’ has earned him an Emmy and a Golden Globe.
Strong will play a public-minded doctor in a small town who discovers the water supply for the public spa is contaminated and may have made tourists — the community’s economic lifeblood — ill.
But his efforts to clean up the mess pit his ethics against political cowards and the media, leaving his family suffering.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk