Conversations at Home with Jeremy Strong of SUCCESSION

hi my name is janelle riley i'm an editor variety and welcome to this seg after a foundation conversation at home with jeremy strong of succession uh in addition to playing troubled son kendall roy on that series today's guest has appeared in such films as selma the big short for which he was nominated for a sag award as a member of the ensemble perhaps most impressively he was last year's hot halloween costume please welcome jeremy strong thank you so much for being here thank you janelle thank you um yes i went as you for halloween and i was um no oh i'm so honored but i wasn't the only one there were so many kindles on uh that i saw online that i don't know if you were aware of that or not i i you know people sent me pictures and you know it was um uh to say the least sort of uh strange and and you know and i guess an indication of of um you know how the show has sort of penetrated uh reached audiences and and and so i you know i never i i never thought i would get to make it to the pantheon of halloween characters so i'm very uh it's very gratifying i don't really jump right in like this but it was probably the most talked about scene of the year um kendall wrapping at his father's birthday celebration uh i think you deserve a grammy frankly for that performance what was it like when you read it in the script or did someone give you a heads up it was happening we we were doing the table read in glasgow and uh i got to the point where we're at the v a in dundee where we have this big event celebrating my father 50 years in business and uh and jesse had had written one lyric that was like you know like a like a kid at a bar mitzvah doing a bad rap and and i and i said uh yo mc kick it and you know and i sort of i went up to jesse after the table read and and sort of uh uh uh uh vehemently advocated cutting the whole thing um and you know and as we do because we have a you know i'm i'm incredibly blessed to have a collaborator like jesse who really um who really listens to his actors and who allows us a sense of ownership of the characters and so and we have a healthy and often combative uh sort of creative dialogue and and he said well you know give me a chance i nick brattel our composer is going to is going to send you something he's working on an actual rap and a beat and you know and and and uh and then he sent me a video of a guy uh who's a sort of um billionaire oil heir and there was an instagram video of he and nelly going up at his 40th birthday party and rapping on stage and this guy is sort of rapping with conviction and there's something about it you know the sort of uh the trying too hard of it uh that just felt like it lived in the place that the show lives and then nick called me on the phone that night and and and uh did the wrap for me over the phone um and so then it became uh then it became sort of a fade to complete and and and i knew i had to commit to it and and you know and try and try and make it work um but it was you know it was one of those things like this show you never know what they're going to throw at you especially i think for me uh because they have put me through the ringer and all sorts of sort of extreme ways um and that's also the great joy of it as an actor because that's what you you know that's that's what you want um and so uh yeah it was it was just it was it was sort of thrilling and and terrifying and you know i've never i've never rapped before and um not even in private and i had nice you know although i love rap music i listen to a lot of i listened to a lot of hip-hop i listened to a lot of rap i listened to a lot of classical and nick had taken this uh uh this this um bach partita and kind of you know done something with it to make it into a beat and you know we start the whole series with me in the backseat of my maybach listening to the beastie boys and it felt like a real um you know marker in terms of how much distance we traveled and and with the character um and so you know because it's television and because we are on you know that you're sort of putting the the plane together as you're as you're flying it um i only had i think a few days and so i just sort of drilled it and tried to really internalize it and and also save it i'm a big believer in in kind of making yourself go out on the limb whenever possible whenever you can kind of walk the plank whatever that means to you i think when you when you sort of wager something like that um it can lead to it can lead to good moments um so i didn't want to do it out loud and i didn't want to rehearse it and i didn't want anyone to see it until we shot it on the on the night so that was that was great because we we had i think four cameras uh so so it enabled us to shoot it in a way that it was live and everyone's reaction was a true reaction and um you know it was yeah i mean i certainly found myself thinking you know uh uh how did i end up here um but it but it it was it was great it was it was a real sort of uh um it felt like another sort of liminal experience where i get to go to to to you know kind of you get a chance to break your own like sound barrier uh when you said that you and the costume you know that you wear i do have to say i do have to take credit for uh uh you know i did a lot of sort of quick research to try and figure out how to how to do that and look at behavior and look at wraps and and so i decided that i have to have a jersey of some kind and so i sketched something on like a hotel stationary and sent it over to michelle matlin our brilliant costume designer and like two days later uh we got a bunch of jerseys in in in scotland so that's the kind of show it is it's a it's a really uh a fantastic sort of um you know uh uh alchemy of of of all the different uh sort of creative voices by the way that font on the jersey didn't exist like my friend had to hand draw it and cut it out like it was it was one of the most expensive and labor intensive costumes i've ever had and and now it exists now now you can find that font i think they should name it after you thank you [Laughter] when you said that you uh immediately advocated uh cutting it was that out of fear or or just uh discomfort no i think it was just that you know one of the interesting things about the show is sort of tonally where it lives because as you know it's sort of it it it straddles a lot of different uh tones and i tend to feel that i'm in a in a drama and and i often feel like my my task is to sort of be the the ballast of this sort of you know ship of of misfits and crazies and and and um and to anchor it and give it weight the world of it uh through the character's struggle and embodying you know the the the the weight that kendall is carrying um and it felt like it possibly you know what is it from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a small step it felt like we might be taking that step um but but at the same time you know and this is where jesse's sort of brilliance is it's one of his great virtues is he really knows um how do i say it you know i heard i heard dustin hoffman once talk about the about jacques cousteau and jacques cousteau said that the trick was in knowing how far to go too far and i feel like jesse knows how to do that without without going into the ridiculous he does go into the absurd and the show sort of lives and between the absurd and the painful um but i think that this you know once i realized how we could do it it felt exactly how far to go too far it felt like let's let's go a little too far um but i you know i think i think i i think i advocated cutting it because i didn't want it to just be silly um but then but then of course he never intended it to be silly he intended it to be uh completely sincere and and i did find in in doing that scene as you know in in this in the second season my character is a bit of a recessive presence uh because he is so uh collapsed in on himself and sort of has become uh kind of fossilized inside frozen and and um so there's a so there's so there's very little it was a real challenge as an actor there's very little active to do and there was it was all very internal um and so that was one of the rare chances of doing something expressive and you know it's funny the way rap kind of makes you feel is sort of the way kendall i think feels inside uh that expansiveness and that power and it allows you like acting to sort of put on a mask that frees you from your from your social self and kendall spends so much time i think feeling small made to feel small by his father and feeling thwarted and feeling uh undermined that actually that rap was very empowering and it was a way of saying i love you to my father um so you know yeah and you know actually brian we were we shot that i think at three in the morning we were on nights and brian is uh you know he's older than i am and and he had i think five scenes to do the next day that that had been rewritten so i think he didn't want to stay for it um and so you know in in in uh you know like in in line with the dynamics of our show i was going to maybe do this rap to an empty seat which i think would have also worked and would have fed me in a certain way but i went up to him and i said just let me do this once let me surprise you with this and we did it and i went over and put the hat on him and and you know and then he stayed for the rest of the night um but uh you know it was it was yeah it was it was a it was it was a great sort of creative puzzle to to to solve and and and you know with a big canvas like this with sort of 10 hours of of material um you get to have so many of those you get to jump through so many sort of rings of fire um it's funny because your you and your succession family came into the sag after foundation in september and we spoke then and already at that point we were probably halfway through the season and kendall had already been through a lot in that season i thought there's what more can they possibly put on this poor man's shoulders um and then it turned out there was so much more uh i'm sort of curious um because some of your co-stars actually expressed concern for your for your mental well-being playing this character are you the sort of person who takes your work home with you at the end of the day i don't know i mean i guess so i guess it it it does kind of take over your life i think um i don't know how to do it otherwise um at the same time i think it's a game you know i mean it it it is a game and and you try and deepen the game and i think really believe in it so so i don't think um listen i think i think that that six months of work was was very hard for me um because i felt such a responsibility to the veracity of what he was experiencing which which was uh and we may have talked about this when i when i saw you back in back in august you know jesse and i had talked about crime and punishment before we started filming the season and i had read it a long time ago and i didn't really remember anything so i reread it before we started and one of the things that really struck me was this description of the monstrous pain that raskolnikov is carrying around inside of him because of what he's done and it's a pain that he can't share with anyone so it's it's sort of a double pain because it's both the guilt of of his sins um but it's also the pain of his aloneness you know kendall is so alone uh um and and what he did in the end of season one with the boy it it separates him from who he was and you know he loses a part of himself and his humanity i think irrevocably and there's a kind of unbridgeable divide between him and everyone around him so i guess i felt like i needed to experience that in a in a as as as as rigorously as i could um so that i might be able to understand it better and and thereby embody it so that the audience can have a palpable you know felt experience of it because as i say so much of it was internal you know so much of it is just you see kendall sitting on the couch in a certain way and and and from that i think you need to understand what he's going through because there's not a lot in the season where we check in on you know on what's going on with him we see him going through the motions and i think he's sort of on autopilot and he's you know just become uh this sort of submissive you know he's sort of he's thrown in the towel he's given up on himself and on his life and decided he'll just kind of do his father's dirty work until the point where that work becomes uh so dirty so sort of monstrous really um that that that that shifts again um but so you know yeah i think i feel a need to to try and create the reality of that when we're at work and and i'm sure you know it was hard sort of i have two little i have two young girls i've got i've got i've got a two-year-old and a seven month old so my my two-year-old um was you know we i was with her at home and then i'd go to work and be on the on the you know 75th story of of a building out on the ledge um you know and so that that was that was a balancing act because i do think you have to uh when you're you know when you're like when you're when you're on the court when you're between the lines it has to be everything in the world it has to matter more than anything in the world so um so so it just so happened for me that the the that the season existed in such a a kind of hellish place that the character is is is trapped in um and so when we finished you know there was a few things iceland where the episode where the season started which was really just following what happened uh in england at the wedding you know that that was really a sort of anguished needed to be an anguished time and going to the boys family's house with my father that was really hard you know i didn't i don't really know what my process is i i don't have a set anything i sort of just follow my instincts but i that i was unprepared for how that was going to to hit me walking into that house and just the smells of the house and the and the sort of squalor of the wallpaper and the kitchen tiles and the pictures of the boy and again you know the process that we make this show i got to walk into that house for the first time with a camera on so then you just get to sort of have the experience and and have it be be witnessed on film um so it's it's it's um but when i by the time we got to the rap kendall had reached a place where basically he had and jesse and i sort of threaded the needle of this quite closely together he had as people do you know the the the anguish of it had faded and he learns to accommodate himself to what happened and even maybe forget about it most of the time i think the the part of the acting challenge was to make sure that it was always there um as a sort of gorgon head you know staring in into him even whenever he starts to feel like he's ventured out of it you know and and feeling okay again um just getting a flash of that uh so it was you know it was it was yeah it was listen i guess i'll say i felt a great release when i was able to get out of that place um yeah uh i'm sort of curious because i i don't think they give you or maybe you do have discussions um you probably don't know where your character is going at the start of the season and and i'm sort of curious um because i went back and re-watched season two and sort of tried to pinpoint the moment where uh i knew kendall was going to make the choice he made at the end um and i don't know if it's just when he feels betrayed by his father because his father you know makes him the blood sacrifice but there's little things throughout where you see him sort of wanting to to push up against that um does jessie sort of give you an overall character arc or do you sort of discover it as the scripts come yeah you know i always know what it's going to be and i you know i hound him for it and he also has been very willing and and and transparent with me um so from the beginning i you know we we talk a fair amount and i have a sense not in a not in terms of the minutia but in terms of the overall arc of it and the broad strokes of it and i know where it's going to begin and you know i know where where it will end um and i know sort of what the stations of the cross are going to be so i knew that the final scene of this season was going to be that reversal and you know and like the first season i felt a tremendous sense of pressure in a way that the whole emotional dramatic architecture of the entire season rests on a single scene again um so and and i also knew that the audience had to not be able to see it coming um i think personally you know there's a way to wonder if there's a kind of kaiser soze-esque uh you know master plan where he's kind of playing possum and you watch it and reverse engineer everything and he's waiting for his moment to to you know to strike i don't think that that that's not my interpretation uh and and i actually think that kendall until the almost very last moment believes that he should be made of us a blood sacrifice to to atone uh for his for his crime um and his cowardice and his um you know his his his sort of moral failure um and you know i think it's interesting because my logan uses that term blood sacrifice and i guess i feel like that's the actor's job you know it's like whatever you have to put yourself through whatever it takes your job is to make a sacrifice of yourself for the audience um so it's not it's not about you having some kind of you know uh pleasant uh experience if that's not what the character is is going through um but but to get back to that i think i think there's the whole season is about penitence uh and kendall again is forced to cross all kinds of moral lines in service of his father and serve in in in a kind of as a penitent um and at a certain point i think in the scene on the boat with my dad you know when he says you're not a killer uh i think there's there's something in that scene which which is not that line by the way because that that's something that he said to me in the pilot essentially you know he's all he's he's always said it is a big dick competition and basically you don't have you're not made of sterner stuff um but the the the i think the revelation for kendall is when his father says no real person involved alluding to uh the boy um and that just that just crossed a line for me uh it's like i know my i knew my father is a bastard i know he's a monster i don't know until that moment that he is maybe evil and and and and that was i saw something in that moment that i can't unsee and that uh in that moment hinges everything um and i and and i decide that i'm not going to you know throw myself on the sword for for him anymore um and that was also you know that's something that came about in a rewrite jesse and i was kind of working on trying to figure out like i felt like the the trigger was there and the firing pin was there but it still needed a hammer as a catalyst to send me to do what i was going to do and you know i was hanging out with nick braun who plays cousin greg and nick was talking about all my sons and the moment when you know he finds out that his father was complicit in in in knowing about the faulty airplane parts and it felt like that's what we needed we needed a moment um where where something you know uh uh is revealed that changes the whole complexion of the situation um and i sort of brought that up with jesse and you know he mulled it over and then maybe a week before we shot the scene a rewrite came in and i think he had woken up at two in the morning and realized you know the boy he had never invoked the boy and that's when without it with that level of callousness and and and inhumanity um so to me that's it was it was simply that wow that's and and correct me if i'm wrong but you didn't really know jesse before this series correct no not at all you know i mean i knew his work some i and i had worked with mckay uh um and adam is the person who really brought me into this uh and i you know and i went in and met jesse and i read for him and and i think you know it was interesting it was one of those times where you know you're in an audition and francine maisler who's an amazing casting director and has been you know a good angel in my life um there was another actor who was also you know testing for the part who's a who's a sort of lion-hearted actor and and i thought he was going to get this job um but something happened in the room where you know the text was a bit different and adam gave me an adjustment that was essentially about kind of loosening him up a bit the character and and and even the idiom in which he speaks and and and uh so we just kind of started playing around with it and then and then and then i think we sort of found something and and i think we all felt kind of maybe this is this is where the character lives and so you know thank god i uh uh got this job because i do feel like it's changed my life and it also has given me the chance to sort of be fully expressed as an actor which is all any of us i think hope for in in a piece of work was it always kendall because i feel like you said you were initially kind of drawn towards roman but i don't know if it yeah as you yeah you know it's interesting i was i i when i first read the script because i went to lunch at adam's house and he said you know i have this script it's kind of like a king lear meets the murdochs you know uh uh you know you know the the sort of uh um corporate entertainment world uh war of the roses story and and and i just want you to read it and tell me what role you want and and that'll be that and and of course it never ends up that way um and i said and i read it and i and i really was drawn to roman because it's a flashy it's a flashy part and you know i i'm i'm a character actor i've always thought of myself as a character actor and and and the kind of work that i've always i think admired the most is sort of chameleonic work where people are transformed and they disappear into their roles um and you know this character of a kind of real bon vivant you know prick was something that i thought would be would be really fun and different for me um i ended up getting to do that in in aaron sorkin's movie molly's game in a kind of different way so i got that out of my system um but i so i i raised my hand for that part and then i found out a month later that that they've given it to kieran and he said and adam said you know well jesse's thinking about you for the lead of the show uh and he wants you to come in and read for it and you know of course i you know that part had also really landed on me i think i felt afraid of it because there's nowhere to hide uh with kendall i knew that what it was going to require as an actor was was in a way no no tricks no embellishment no embroidery simply kind of coming from my center and like from the base of my spine um and that is really the kind of acting that i've always wanted to do and and the acting that moves me the most um but it felt scary because it just felt like a different way of working which was just about a kind of honesty um without you know without getting to transform in some in some way uh you know i like like i i just did the trial of the chicago seven with aaron back in the fall which all of a sudden is sort of you know it's scarily relevant given our headlines right now um but that was a role that is the kind of thing i've always wanted to do which is you know a a sort of guerrilla theater you know hippie from 1968 with with a different voice and a different appearance and a different sort of you know energy um and so this you know yeah kendall feels like there's nowhere to hide um but it but you know it also i think you know when when i read something i think you look for how is this character in trouble and and what does this character need and how badly do they need it you know those are the real engines and with kendall it's like boy is he in trouble you know he's in trouble in so many ways inside and outside and his need is oceanic he you know he needs so much so it felt really infinite in terms of the the possibilities of the character but it also felt very daunting to me um yeah and uh were you guys had you started work on the third season when uh no record oh okay so do you have any idea what's in store for him i mean tell us everything that happens and see yeah right uh no you know i i do um i have some i have some idea you know i have a kind of broad sense i do think that the writers you know we were supposed to start filming in april early april and you know given the pandemic and the world i'm sure and i don't know this for a fact but i'm sure they're thinking about all of this and taking it on board as i'm sure most writers and you know show runners are doing right now uh in terms of you know do you integrate this in to to to our to our story world which exists in the same universe as the audience and you use this as material to sort of lean into um and so i think that there's might be a bit of like uh recalibrating but i but i have a general sense of of of the shape of it and and also you know one thing i love is you know jesse will send me articles or books that are not remotely about the world of our show or for you know historical figures or historical periods things that he's thinking about that are going to be sort of the the well water that he's going to draw from so in that sense in a kind of characterological sense i have a lot of i know a lot about where the character is going to be for the third season um and that kind of feels like all i need to know if i can do all my work in terms of knowing who this kendall is you know who is the kendall that says it's my turn um and finally comes into power and what that's gonna maybe look like and then you know as far as the storyline that can just fall on me and i'm sort of ready to take it as it comes uh speaking of the pandemic i'm just sort of asking people during this time um you know what's what's keeping you going creatively are there shows you're watching or things you're reading i know you have like 12 movies coming out in the next year so you've been very busy i i imagine you're you know reading tons of scripts at this point i'm reading some scripts i'm uh you know it's interesting i think it's been i think it's been a bit of a of a of a fallow period for me um you know i'm in denmark i'm in a little fishing village on the coast of denmark which is a very lucky place for for me and my family to to have you know sort of been uh stranded um but i've got two little kids under two and so really the creativity of this time has just been about my children and you know we live next to a forest called the troll woods this big birch forest and and miles of sand dunes and uh uh and i've just been spending time with them you know because as you know when you're an actor and you work uh you're you're away a lot or you're sort of half there and half somewhere else and so this has been a a real gift in terms of an opportunity to be really fully here with my family um and yeah and i'm reading a lot of scripts and and there's a there's there's there's a few things that i'm sort of actively uh working on and putting together that i'm really excited about but it has i think for all of us asked the question of what kind of work you know because we all had a moment i think where we were really facing the possible loss of our world you know where we were like how how much is this going to go sideways and where is this going to land i think we still feel that in america in a sense of how how bad is this going to get before before it gets better um but i i think it has made everyone sort of take stock of what matters to them and what's essential and and certainly for me it's made me think about what kind of stories i want to be part of uh part of and and what kind of stories i want to serve you know i feel very proud that that i've gotten to be part of selma and detroit and the trial of chicago 7 which are all movies about that period in time you know detroit being in 1967 and those riots and and chicago 7 being in 1968 in 1969 and you know those are the kind of films i've always wanted to to do um and and i think succession in a way belongs in a in a place of of shows that are able to to speak to the the kind of you know the the the maladies that are afflicting us as a as a world and as a as a society um because it it's not it's not really an indictment of of of of the roy family but it is i think an examination of you know the the the kind of moral rot um that that is so that permeates so much of this of the you know structure of our country and the world and is connected to why things are falling apart uh right now um and to our you know the moral rock that that is in the leadership position in america um so it feels like a way uh through exploring these these very these very specific individual characters on a human in a human way um of of getting at a larger story uh that that you know so it's so it's epic in that sense um but yeah no i think you know i'm kind of i heard what i i heard someone i think i read it somewhere that when the fisherman is not at sea he mends his nets and i feel like we're all kind of having a chance to do that right now before we cast back out to sea um i'm very excited to go back to work whenever that might be you know i don't know when i know hbo is planning you know as soon as it's safe and as soon as it's possible we'll we'll be shooting again and i think that will be soon um but you know this has changed all of us in ways that i don't think i think we're still too in the middle of it to understand um but i know going back to work i you know i'm i'm i'm a different person after this experience well i i don't want to rush anyone but um i really do hope you guys get back soon because i need that third season like like soon thank you i want to remind everyone watching at home you can find information on sag after foundation's covet 19 relief fund in the comments i want to thank you so much for joining us i look forward to everything you have going this year thank you so much for being here

Channel: SAG-AFTRA Foundation

Views: 176,712

Keywords: SAG Foundation, SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Acting, Actors, Q&A, Interview, Jeremy Strong, Jenelle Riley, Succession, Kendall Roy

Id: jQ9F1qUy4vM

Length: 40min 24sec (2424 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020