The season finale of Succession gave away the answer as to who would lead the family empire after the death of Logan Roy. The last shot of the acclaimed show featured Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) walking alone in Battery Park where he simply stares at the river ahead. Now in a new interview, actor Jeremy Strong has revealed that although the shot ends with Kendall standing, he wanted to jump into the river during the final moment. (Also read: HBO estimates 2.9 million watched Succession finale on Sunday night)
Earlier, showrunner Jesse Armstrong had commented on the ending and said that he knew how he wanted to end the show and that choice did not change with the possibility of how it must end with the successive seasons. Now Jeremy has revealed what he thought Kendall would do at that moment.
Jeremy’s perspective on the end
Speaking to Vanity Fair in a new interview, Jeremy said, “To me, what happens at the board vote is an extinction level event for this character. There’s no coming back from that…Listen to the John Berryman poem that Jesse [Armstrong] has named these finales after. John Berryman himself died by suicide, jumping into the frozen river. I tried to go into the water after we cut — I got up from that bench and went as fast as I could over the barrier and onto the pilings, and the actor playing Colin raced over.”
Jeremy wanted to jump
“I didn’t know I was gonna do that, and he didn’t know, but he raced over and stopped me. I don’t know whether in that moment I felt that Kendall just wanted to die — I think he did — or if he wanted to be saved by essentially a proxy of his father. There’s a kind of doom loop that we’re all stuck in, and Kendall is trapped in this sort of silent scream with Colin there as both a bodyguard and a jailer… My God, it would’ve been hard to do. But I think you even feel on a cellular level the intention or the longing to cross that threshold. The way [Armstrong] leaves us with a kind of ambivalence stays true to his vision,” he concluded.
Succession aired its 90-minute series finale on Sunday after which many fans took to Twitter to react to the show’s payoff favorably. An estimated 2.9 million people watched or streamed the series finale, as per reports.