If you watched last night the last episode of the series “SuccessionYou know things didn’t turn out quite as well as Kendall Roy (played brilliantly by Jeremy Strong) had hoped. And now the actor is shedding light on how things could have been even darker than what ended up in the episode, Kara Swisher said. On the official podcast “Caliphate”: “I always felt there was no going back from this.”
Spoilers for the “Caliphate” series finale.
In the final moments of the episode, after Kendall loses the bid to block the sale to exotic tech Lucas Mattson (Alexander Skarsgård) and all the opportunities to lead the company his father once promised him, he sits alone, morose, in the public garden, overlooking the rocky gray water. The only person he’s with is Colin (Scott Nicholson), his father’s former chauffeur and now his employee. He is a lonely man with nothing. The only person he’s with is on his payroll. It’s very gloomy. But it could have been more bleak.
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When Swisher said it looked like Kendall would jump, Strong confirmed that he played it that way at least once. “I looked at these waves. And it was very windy that day and very cold. And there was a piece of metal clanking and it was this horrible sound. I stood up and walked slowly to the railing that was erected there and climbed it. I didn’t really know what I was planning to do. And the actor saw me who plays Colin and ran and stopped me from doing it.”
Strong acknowledges that the version in the episode is better (and that author Jesse Armstrong’s script never changed it). But Strong also says he wanted to make sure he was playing as if skipping the side was a possibility.
“I mean, I sure would pick Jesse He is better. And in a way I think you see the intention in the character. I mean, you said you felt like he was going to get in. And I did it. Strong said.
Later, Strong summed up his feelings about where his character ended up: “It’s quite a tragic ending, from my point of view.” But the actor acknowledges there could have been room for hope, at least in the script: “I think Jesse may have meant it in the writing, this feeling that Kendall is lost, but maybe he’s free. And maybe he’ll keep walking,” Strong said. “I think I felt everything in my body that there was no going back from this.”
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