Successor Jeremy Strong has revealed that the final scene of the iconic HBO show could have been different.
Strong, 44, told Anderson Cooper during a Tuesday night interview, his first since the show ended, that instead of leaving his character standing on the waterfront in New York City’s Battery Park, he tried to get in the water.
“I tried to go into the water. One of the incredible things about working on something for seven years… is that your instinct for the thing gets detached from you and comes alive. Your job is to give the writing heart and guts and all that stuff,” Strong said on AC360.
The final scene of the show where Strong’s character, Kendall Roy, comes to terms with the fact that he will never inherit his father’s media empire after a board vote fell against him.
Strong went on to say that it was not for him to say how the show would end. “It’s for Jesse Armstrong, but for the grace of him we all went this whole time, and his writing, and the depth of it, and his insight into human nature, he feels people are doomed to repeat themselves,” the De resident of Boston said.
Success star Jeremy Strong gave his first television interview on AC360 with Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night
Strong explained that there was an alternate ending to the show’s now-iconic finale that was almost filmed
In the show’s final scene, a contemplative Kendall Roy is forced to accept that he will never become the CEO of his father’s company.
The whopping 88-minute finale on Sunday night, which concluded the hit series about a billionaire media mogul and his children’s struggle to take over family business Waystar Royco, left viewers reeling – because none of Roy’s siblings won.
In the episode, Shiv Roy took one last turn against her brother Kendall, blowing his plans to keep their late father’s company and become CEO by voting to have their media empire taken over by a Swedish technology giant, GoJo.
Strong described his sister eventually siding with her husband as a “capitulation” of her character by allowing the “patriarchy” to win.
Strong said in a separate interview with the New York Times that the final scene was shot in Battery Park earlier this year during the winter.
“I’ve never been so cold in my life. What happened was like the ninth circle of hell, which is frozen. I felt nothing,” he said.
The star didn’t specifically say that the temperature prevented them from shooting the final scene with him in the water.
“I tried to go into the water. We’ve seen Kendall lose time and time again, but this feels catastrophic,” he added.
The Times piece points out how important 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 that they are trying to become CEO to be supported.
“He’s always in a place where he could take off, or he could be submerged and drown in it. He’s treading water for his life,” Strong added.
Celebrating: Just hours after the explosive finale of the Succession series aired on HBO, one of the show’s crew members shared how star Jeremy Strong celebrated: by getting his head shaved bald by his on-screen siblings.
Unlike the fictional character, the show’s ending was much more celebratory for Strong.
Just hours after the final episode aired, Strong was seen in a video posted on social media 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 hands the clippers to her as she begins to shave the sides and back of his head.
The clippers are then passed along to several other crew members, as a 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 smiles.
Powerful answers: ‘Yes, go in! Anyone 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 replies, “No!” as the room erupts in laughter.
Snook shaves the right side of Strong’s head when Culkin pulls out an egg and smashes it onto Strong’s nearly bald head, which Snook didn’t expect.
Strong grabs the clippers from a stunned Snook as Culkin brushes part of the egg onto her face before they 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 in its first three seasons.
The show has won Outstanding Drama Series for two of its three seasons and is also likely to be one of the top contenders for this year’s Emmy Awards.
Strong has signed on to play the role of a man who tries to expose water pollution in a Norwegian spa in Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play An Enemy of the People.
The play — with a rewrite by 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 for directing “Fun Home,” will helm the revival.
It will be Strong’s second time on Broadway. He starred 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 plays a small-town public doctor who discovers that the water supply for the public spa is polluted and may have sickened tourists – the economic lifeblood of the community.
But his efforts to clean up the mess pitted his ethics against political cowards and the media, causing his family to suffer.