Dear Gossips,
I savoured Hunter Harris’s latest piece for Vulture this morning. It’s about Succession, its cast and showrunner, after having spent two weeks with the season three production in Italy this summer, part of Vulture’s fall preview. And there’s a lot to look forward to this fall – at least in terms of viewing content which we might need in the same way as last fall if we have to go back into lockdown.
What? Lockdown? Sorry to be a buzzkill right off the top today but it’s not like I actually want to be talking about f-cking lockdowns. No one wants to be talking about another f-cking lockdown, so please, if you haven’t already, please get vaccinated, or if you know people who haven’t, ride their asses to get vaccinated.
Back to Succession, then. As we know now, returns in October, along with Insecure and Curb Your Enthusiasm. As Hunter puts it, this is the series “featuring terrible people with terrible ideas about how to save the family’s terrible, lucrative business”. And, more importantly, this is not a series that ever intends to redeem terrible. The terrible in Succession remains reliably terrible, so while we don’t know exactly how many seasons in total we’ll end up getting out of the Roy family, nobody who’s enjoying their terribleness should be looking ahead to a series finale about the power of transformation. Showrunner Jesse Armstrong seems to already be preparing people for this, telling Hunter that:
“I’m always a little suspicious about growth,” says Armstrong, who also co-created the cult-favorite British series Peep Show and comes from a background of half-hour comedies. “The idea that we all grew through life, had more perspective and wisdom and therefore maybe took greater care of people around us — I don’t think it is true.” It’s an arc he thinks works better in film: “Something changes and somebody grows and they learn something and that’s the end of the movie. I don’t think that’s impossible, but I’m suspicious of that shape to people’s lives. It’s hard to change in a fundamental way.”
Maybe, eventually, he’ll change his mind. But right now? These assholes will stay assholes.
For more from Hunter Harris and Succession, head to Vulture to read the full article. My favourite part is when Hunter just blows past the fact that Gerri, aka J Smith-Cameron in real life, is married to Kenneth Lonergan.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
