Take a look behind the craft and creation of the award-winning drama series Succession with executive producers Jesse Ar | dG1fTS1EMzUzWUNkNk0
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00:00 Kendall Roy says his father oversaw millions of dollars
00:03 in payments to cover up criminal activity.
00:05 When season one was well-received,
00:07 it was like, "Okay, how do we top that?"
00:09 And of course, when season two was even better received,
00:11 then coming to season three was just absolutely blind terrifying,
00:14 to be honest, absolutely terrifying.
00:16 Action stations, let's fucking go.
00:17 Let's go.
00:18 You know, we try and start the writers' room every day
00:20 by saying, you know, there might be a little bit of goodwill,
00:22 but three minutes to the episode,
00:24 if it isn't really working, all that goodwill evaporates.
00:27 There was a feeling that it'd be amazing
00:29 if we brought this off, in spite of all the obstacles.
00:32 Can I do this? Can I win?
00:34 We'll go full fucking beast!
00:38 We did our normal writers' room,
00:44 which we do in London, for four or five months,
00:47 and we all meet up.
00:48 I was in a position in March of 2020
00:51 of, as usual, being a little bit behind
00:54 and wanting the whole world to stop for a couple of months.
00:58 Um, which it promptly did.
01:00 In a way that no one would have wished it to stop.
01:04 You heard? We're out.
01:06 Uh-huh.
01:08 The whole idea of making a show during a pandemic
01:12 was a little bit scary, not to mention Waystar,
01:16 which is in one of the World Trade Center buildings.
01:19 You know, the whole downtown economic sector,
01:22 Wall Street, all of it, was essentially shut down.
01:26 It was surreal. A little Twilight Zone-y.
01:28 Over more than eight months of shooting,
01:31 we were tested five days a week,
01:33 which tried to minimize shutdowns, positive cases.
01:36 Let's gang up on Dad and take him down.
01:37 Jesus, let me shut the door first.
01:39 In the first half of the season,
01:40 just the physical limitations of how many background people
01:43 you could have in one space
01:45 and how far apart they needed to be was really tough.
01:48 Because the actors had all this extra stuff on,
01:50 and so did we, that when the actors,
01:53 you know, just before the take, come to take all that stuff off,
01:56 there was a sort of shocking rawness
01:58 to seeing people physically next to each other
02:01 when we're all aching a bit for human connection.
02:03 And seeing it happen on camera live
02:05 was always a sort of thrilling moment.
02:07 On Succession, the staging is about finding authenticity
02:13 and naturalism to these scenes.
02:14 My blocking will be, "Okay, come on in.
02:17 Let's see what happens."
02:18 It's like the first day of rehearsing a play
02:20 and keeping it as unspecific as possible.
02:23 The more specific it gets, the more geometric,
02:27 the more symmetrical it becomes,
02:28 the less authentic it always appears to me.
02:30 Just feeling a little out of the loop, Dad.
02:32 Oh, of course. Things move very fast.
02:34 Come in, come in, come in.
02:35 The situation that they find themselves in at the end
02:38 is exhilarating and terrifying.
02:41 Easily the toughest scene I've ever directed on the show.
02:45 And this vast 11-page scene with so many layers to it,
02:50 I have you beat!
02:52 For a long time, I couldn't find the ending.
02:55 I always know what the end shot is, and I couldn't find it.
02:57 And then we did a take where we just continued Sarah's action,
03:02 and we gave her character time to process that brief,
03:05 if you like, and shock.
03:06 And she broke down, and he walked over
03:09 and he put his hand on her shoulder and said, "You okay?"
03:11 You okay?
03:13 And she was starting to shake,
03:15 but she instead put a game face on and said, "Yep."
03:17 And as soon as we had that moment, I knew we had.
03:20 The end of the season.
03:21 I... fucking... win.
03:24 You know, filmmaking is pretty tough at the best of times.
03:28 There's nothing like adversity to bring things closer as well.
03:31 Everyone sort of rose together.
03:33 Before we started, the problems with COVID
03:35 did sometimes seem insurmountable,
03:36 but we did get carried through by the ingenuity
03:39 and strength of the crew.
03:40 Certainly, I look back on the season
03:43 with a very clear conscience that we really worked our asses off,
03:45 and what comes out of it, I hope, is amazing television,
03:49 if we were doing our job right.
03:50 It's pretty exciting if you love this stuff, which I do.
03:53 You just gotta try and make the stories
03:55 as fascinating as you can, and as true as you can.
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04:00 It's war!
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