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"bio": "Rae Alexandra is a Reporter/Producer for KQED Arts & Culture, and the creator/author of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/program/rebel-girls-from-bay-area-history\">Rebel Girls From Bay Area History\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bizarrebayarea\">Bizarre Bay Area\u003c/a> series. Her debut book, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area\u003c/a> was published by City Lights in March 2026. In 2023, Rae was awarded an SPJ Excellence in Journalism Award for Arts & Culture. Rae was born and raised in Wales and subsequently — even after two decades in Northern California — still uses phrases that regularly baffle her coworkers.",
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"title": "‘Succession’ Creator Explains Everything About That Shocking Season 4 Finale",
"headTitle": "‘Succession’ Creator Explains Everything About That Shocking Season 4 Finale | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>The following interview includes plenty of spoilers for the series finale of ‘Succession’.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The much-anticipated series finale of HBO’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/1045640636/succession-recaps\">\u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>\u003c/a> answered one big question — who would succeed media mogul patriarch Logan Roy — but we still have more: Did the show creator know the end at the beginning? Why didn’t any of the Roy children wind up as CEO of the family conglomerate Waystar Royco? Was Kendall considering jumping into the river at the end? Why was the presidential election left unresolved? And why was Logan in the bathroom in his first and last scenes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jesse Armstrong is the show’s creator, showrunner and head writer. In the past, he has been reluctant to reveal much about \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>‘s plotlines or the characters’ motivations. But with the finale behind us, Armstrong is ready to talk. He spoke to Terry Gross, along with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525575857/veep-executive-producer-on-making-a-show-about-the-craven-desire-for-power\">Frank Rich\u003c/a>, an executive producer of the series.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for clarity and length. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Terry Gross: Why couldn’t any of the siblings take over the company? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Armstrong: \u003c/strong>If you were thinking about this as a business situation rather than a piece of drama, they might have slipped through, one of them, for a little while, for probably an unsatisfactory interregnum … as they tanked the share price. It could have happened, but in a drama this felt like the appropriate end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930051\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930051\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-800x450.jpe\" alt=\"A white man in a suit and a white woman wearing black sit in the back of a car, street lights visible through the back window. Her hand gently rests on his in between them.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-800x450.jpe 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-1020x574.jpe 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-160x90.jpe 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-768x432.jpe 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-1536x864.jpe 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68.jpe 1909w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Succession’ series creator Jesse Armstrong likens Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Shiv’s (Sarah Snook) hands in the final episode to the joining of “two pieces of porcelain.” \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do you see Shiv Roy at the end – as a prisoner who has weakened her position, or somebody who’s using all of her smarts to still have access to power? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>Everyone has their own view and I can tell you mine, which is that for me it was a moment of equality. Chilly, rather terrifying equality, but equality, which has never been the case in that relationship before. Tom has always been subservient. Now he has this status, but his status is contingent. That’s kind of what the whole episode has been about. Shiv’s status is as all the kids are – secure. It’s secure in a financial sense. She has billions of dollars. She has wealth that could never diminish, whatever happened to the world. And she also has a name, which will sort of haunt her and make her interesting, to a certain degree, for the rest of her life, and that can’t be taken away from her. Whereas Tom’s position could be taken away in the click of her fingers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13926773']So for me, there’s a very terrifying equality in that, a remarkable dry hand on hand. It’s not really even human contact. It’s a sort of two pieces of porcelain or something. So that’s what it is for me. That isn’t what it would be for everyone. And certainly you could see the situation being a clever stratagem by which Shiv remains in play. Maybe that thought will occur to her tomorrow or the day after. But for me, the show’s ended at this point and the story is over and that’s where I think they end up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong> Frank Rich: \u003c/strong>I’m fascinated to hear Jesse come clean about it. I guess I experienced it as very transitional and very emotional. I felt that she was, in some ways, in emotional shock. When you look at the rapid fire of truly traumatic confrontations and events and the changing over of the business and all of that in a very compressed period of time, my feeling about her is that she’s leaving her options open. She does have this inheritance of a sort in terms of who she is, but also I just can’t imagine when she’s been through that with Kendall and she’s been through that with the company that she wanted to take over and been through everything with her husband, that she has a clear direction. So she’s in the moment, sort of. But there’s a kind of numbness. Part of this to me comes from Sarah [Snook]’s performance. It’s almost like she’s been traumatized, not maybe in the clinical sense, but just she’s in limbo. And I love the fact that it ends with that ambiguity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930052\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930052\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A white man in a dark blue shirt sits at a bar, martini glass in front of him.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246.jpg 1700w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The series finale of ‘Succession’ shows Roman (Kieran Culkin) for what he’s always been: a sad playboy. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The last shot of Roman Roy is of him drinking a martini alone at a bar after saying “We’re all bulls—.” Why did you place him at the bar? What does that say to you about Roman in the moment and in the future?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>The piece in the bar, there was more to it, a little bit more dialogue, but I think when we were in the edit room, Roman’s face, Kieran [Culkin]’s face was so eloquent that we just used a rather extraordinary set of expressions. … Kieran’s character, Roman, he ends up most particularly exactly where he started, which is living the life of a sort of sad playboy, I guess, and sipping a drink, which people might associate with his quasi-love of his life, Gerri, who we’ve often seen sipping a martini.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>In the last shot of the series, we see Kendall Roy sitting on a bench, staring at the Hudson River. Water is such a powerful symbol in the series. (Kendall nearly drowns in a pool in Season 3, and he’s haunted by a deadly car wreck in a river in Season 1.)\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>Did you know all along that the theme of water would also play out in the final scene? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>Oh, it’s such a fascinating, knotty question. I guess water can also mean baptism and cleansing and ablution … and a fun swim and splashing in the pool, and we’ve occasionally seen it used that way. It’s developed. There was no sort of image structure that was formulaically laid down at the beginning of the show. … And it was the genius of [director] Mark Mylod and the camera operators and Jeremy that took us right down to the tip of Battery Park, to the tip of Manhattan, and looking at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Do you think he’s contemplating ending his life? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>For me, no. … I think for me, Kendall, at the end, one of the things he lacks is even the freedom to determine his own course through life. The name and the wealth around him – to lots of us, obviously, it seems extraordinarily fortunate, and it is. But I do believe there is a certain kind of tragedy to a royal name, to a huge business name, to being a Disney or a Windsor or any of those kinds of names, and he can never, ever escape that. And one of the ways he can’t escape that is to have a bubble of protection around him … of money and human beings. In this case, he’s got his dad’s bodyguard right there with him. So even if he is contemplating it, I don’t think it could ever happen to him. And yeah, for me, that’s not the way the story goes for this kind of person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930059\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930059\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-800x532.png\" alt=\"An older man with white hair and beard sits in a leather armchair in an opulent living room. A younger man wearing an overcoat crouches before him.\" width=\"800\" height=\"532\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-800x532.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-1020x678.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-160x106.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-768x510.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-1536x1021.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM.png 1568w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jeremy Strong, left, as Kendall Roy, and Brian Cox as Logan Roy in ‘Succession.’ \u003ccite>(Peter Kramer/HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>In an improvised take of that final scene that was not included in the final edit, Jeremy Strong climbs over the railing from the pedestrian side of the river to the riverside, looking as if he’s really maybe about to jump in. Were you there when he improvised that? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>Yeah. We were there. It was biting cold. I’m there every day, and certainly for that important scene. I was terrified. I was terrified that he might fall in and be injured. … He didn’t look like he was going to jump in. But once he climbed over that barrier — when you film, there are generally a lot of health and safety assessments made, and that was not our plan that day. And normally I know that if we’d even been thinking of that happening, we would have had boats and frogmen and all kinds of safety measures, which we didn’t have. So my first thought was for his physical safety as a human being, not anything about the character. That’s what I felt on the day. Good Lord, above.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13906871']\u003cstrong>Rich:\u003c/strong> It was like breaking a barrier, walking through the fourth wall and it was bitterly cold on top of it. Also, everyone was eager for the cold reasons and also for scheduling reasons involving subsequent production, to be done with it. And I think Scott Nicholson, who played [bodyguard] Colin, was also somewhat alarmed and was functioning as a person as much as a character in that moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You haven’t allowed Kendall to grow. Every time I think he’s getting more mature or more responsible, he’s not. Every time I think he’s getting a conscience, he doesn’t. Why not let him grow? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>It’s not that I don’t think people are capable of change or growth. I guess I would say they happen rarely, slowly and not necessarily all in one direction, in that you’re just as likely to devolve as evolve as a person, unfortunately, I think. There’s a sort of sense about narrative, especially screenplay, that that’s what happens in a script: that people grow, they learn, and that is the shape of the script. And I would gently reject that, I guess. I don’t think that has to be the shape of the story. I don’t think it’s a true shape of all stories. Not that you can’t make a great story out of those things — and I’d like to write some of those — but that isn’t the story of this show. That doesn’t seem to be the truth of these people. And so we had to find story shapes which didn’t follow that particular shape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rich: \u003c/strong>I fundamentally believe that people don’t change that much in real life. Some people do. Sure. But a lot of people don’t, including a lot of people I just know in real life. But look at politics, which I also spent a lot of time looking at as a journalist: There was always a new Nixon. There’s always a political move where some major politician is going to change his spots. I’m talking about ideology. I’m talking about personality and the human quotient. And there’s an analog there, I think, with the corporate world, and people are who they are. And a lot of people, particularly people who want power, whether it be economic or political power, keep doing the same things. And certainly it’s true in the arena where we set our show. It’s not like Murdoch has ever changed, or Sumner Redstone ever changed in terms of how they operate as people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930054\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930054\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A man in a grey suit sits, feet up on a desk in front of him, with a facial expression that reflects being deep in thought.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539.jpg 1816w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Frank Rich says that, in a line that didn’t make it into the final cut, someone describes Tom’s face as “sort of like a piece of Wonder Bread with a smile drawn on it.” \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>At what point did you know Tom would end up being the CEO of \u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>Waystar Royco, but he’d still be a puppet, that he’d be the figurehead, and Lukas Matsson\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>from GoJo would really be pulling the strings?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>One of the things I like in the show is for things to feel natural, to feel like you could read them in \u003cem>The Wall Street Journal\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Financial Times\u003c/em>, for them to feel like they fit, they’re congruent with the way that we see business, culture and politics going. And so in a way … it became obvious to me that [Tom] should take over. There are a few of these people who come after. … They have to have certain qualities, the person who can succeed from a founder, and I guess there are few examples in life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a guy, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/19/490573944/viacom-ceo-out-as-redstone-family-reasserts-control\">Philippe Dauman\u003c/a>, who took over from \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/375143072/media-titan-sumner-redstone-who-made-viacom-a-global-empire-dies-at-97\">Sumner Redstone\u003c/a> when Shari [Redstone] was also trying to take over in the Viacom CBS empire. He rather floated up and made himself very amenable to power. … We tried to take from all kinds of historical moments. I guess I also thought a little bit about Stalin coming through the middle after Lenin’s death and there being much more glamorous intellectual candidates — Trotsky and Zinoviev — but Stalin arranged things and then slipped through the middle. So there were a bunch of historical and business parallels that started to seem like they were pointing in Tom’s direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rich: \u003c/strong>I can’t say I was surprised. I mean, I’m sort of delighted, even though, in a line that didn’t make it to the final cut [someone says Tom’s] face is “sort of like a piece of Wonder Bread with a smile drawn on it.” He’s an empty suit, as is said. But, in Hollywood, in the ’30s, in the media companies at that time, it was the joke that “the son-in-law also rises.” And so in some ways it was completely plausible to me. And I also knew that these three kids could not take over for all the reasons we know, the various layers of them as people, as business people, all of it. So yeah, I thought it was an exciting, creative turn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The presidential election isn’t decided yet when the series ends because there was a fire in Milwaukee and ballots were burned. Why did you want to end the series without the election actually being resolved?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong:\u003c/strong> I wrestled with this one quite a lot. I always knew that I wanted to have an election during the show because we’ve seen these characters and we’re interested in their psychology, hopefully. I certainly am. And that’s one strand of the show. But I don’t think we’d be interested in them if they ran a wallpaper factory. It’s because of their influence through the media that they were fascinating to me, and so I wanted to show that, at its most important moment. But I also felt that, especially as a British person, that it wasn’t appropriate for the show to declare on what even our fictional world we think is going to be the fate of the republic. So it was important to me that we left it where it would be. And we worked with very skilled political operatives to figure out the right configuration of story that would both put ATN, their news organization, in a powerful position to affect things, but also would leave things poised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people find the episode sort of gut-wrenching and traumatic, and I can imagine because it’s a very serious time for America. I didn’t feel it was appropriate for us to say which way we think things will go. So that was why we left it poised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930055\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930055\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"An older man in a suit walks confidently away from a helicopter. He has white hair, a white beard and is wearing sunglasses.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35.jpg 1905w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jesse Armstrong doesn’t think anyone would have been interested in the story of the Roy family if they’d run a wallpaper factory. “It’s because of their influence through the media that they were fascinating to me,” he says. Above, Brian Cox as media mogul Logan Roy. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> is a very hard to describe mix of satire and drama and tragedy. Did you want to bring in the comedy slowly and not kind of announce itself right away? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>The tone of the show is kind of how I write. Not that I can’t try and write in different tones, but this one was what seemed appropriate to this show. And I can kind of try and back-engineer how it came about. But the truth is, it just came out, the voices of these characters. … I’m thinking of that George Orwell quote about why I write, which is “there’s some lie I want to expose.” And I guess one impulse was that we have a certain view of these corporate titans in our culture, and it’s sometimes that they are very, very brilliant and can do no wrong. And I don’t want to diminish their talents completely. I don’t think I could do what they do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13928692']But I think that they also have good fortune and often have good fortunes behind them. Rupert Murdoch had many millions in newspapers already before he started. So I guess one of the things I was curious about was showing the ludicrous, the comic, the incongruous, the gross parts of these gilded lives. And so maybe that’s where the impulse to make sure that there was comedy in there came from, because that’s a good register to try and approach some of that stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The series begins and ends for Logan in the bathroom. The first time we see him, he pees on the rug. Then he dies on his jet in the bathroom. So that seems to be a motif, Logan in the bathroom. Why? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>One thing is that comedy often works better in small spaces. And so if a scene isn’t working, it’s sometimes worth trying: putting it in a smaller space and seeing what happens when people have to be in each other’s physicality. Apart from that, I guess there is something about, maybe it’s something childish about seeing kings and queens on the toilet. In the U.K., it was meant to be a hard thing to imagine: the late queen being on the toilet. I guess there may be something childlike about seeing great figures doing what all of us must do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930056\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930056\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A woman and two men, all white, huddle around a coffee table, listening closely to a message being relayed.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shiv (Sarah Snook), Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) struggle to be taken seriously by their father and the upper level cronies at Waystar in Season 4’s “Honeymoon States” episode. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You have unique writing styles for each of the siblings and for Logan. Can you talk a little bit about coming up with each of their voices? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>It struck me that powerful people often don’t say so much. And Logan says probably many fewer words than his less powerful colleagues and people who surround him. Indeed, it’s probably true that the people with the least power speak the most. When you think about Tom (before he assumed power) and Greg, they have these great torrents of words because they’re trying to fill in the holes and equivocate and countermand what they’ve just said to precisely express themselves, because they’re worried the power is going to take a dim view of them. So there’s something about literally the quantity of words that you speak and also the volume. Power can often be very quiet and make you lean in until it explodes and makes you lean out. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13928466']We hear [Kendall] first listening to rap music and he has a desire to hit a sort of colloquial but buzzword-infused [way of speaking]. I think he likes language. I think he wants to use interesting language. He’s not a terrible performer. Some people find his rap utterly risible. I find it comic, but also not bad. I think he has a certain verbal felicity, a certain verbal interest, and sometimes that goes over the edge into being ludicrous. Shiv, her tragedy has been that she has sought to modulate her every performance in the sense of what she’s doing in the world to keep her options open. And so there’s a sense in which she does that verbally as well. Roman is explosive and the most close to being a truth teller in that kind of jester role where he can say the unsayable and then claim that he didn’t say it or didn’t mean it. It’s a very powerful position once you start to be able to say, “I didn’t mean it,” after everything, every true thing that you say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED2pSguRn7U\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Roy siblings’ cousin Greg has a mixture of cluelessness and formality when he’s on the witness stand during the hearings about the Waystar cruise line sexual harassment scandal. At one point, while being questioned by a senator, Greg answers, “If it is to be said, so it be. So it is.” Can you talk about Greg’s strangely formal way of speaking there?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong:\u003c/strong> I think there’s a little bit of the kind of 18th century in there, that sort of courtier vibe. But I think there’s also a class thing there, which, you know, is the phrase “hyper correction,” where people who are outside their normal class or social arena sometimes end up being idiotic because they’re trying to be too proper. It happens in our English, class-obsessed society, when people try to change their vocal pitch and nature to try and fit in with posher people and you hypercorrect, and then you become ludicrous by throwing in those extra words or reversing the order and doing things which you think sound like they might have a formality, which is appropriate, but ends up being nonsense. So it’s a very nice thing in life to be comfortable with how you speak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan is on his way to Norway to complete the deal with GoJo when he dies after suffering some kind of cardiac episode in the plane bathroom. Tom is on the plane and calls the siblings and they each say their goodbyes on the phone to him, even though it seems he’s already dead. Have you ever been in a position like that, of saying your goodbye on the phone?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>No, honestly, I haven’t. I’ve known sad things and I’ve known people who suffered sad things, and people were generous in the writers room sharing thoughts about those areas, things they knew. … I don’t believe you have to have been through something like that precisely to be able to write it. Often, the terrible thing we imagine in the future can be as vivid as the thing we’ve experienced. … There is something about the modern era, which is that often sad, bad news comes at us like that from nowhere and hits us from nowhere. … The modern sadnesses often happen in this rather disembodied way. And then you’re left in a nowhere state where you’re physically disconnected from the events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930057\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930057\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man and. woman on a couch sit, looking concerned. Another man in a suit sits opposite them, slumped forward. A fourth man stands nearby. They are in a sitting room area of a yacht.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Roy siblings huddle with the Waystar communications team to craft a statement after learning of their father’s sudden death. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You really capture the not knowing what to say aspect in a situation like that — not knowing how to say goodbye, but also the conflicted love-hate relationship they have with their father. Can you talk a little bit about writing those goodbyes? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>The whole show is such multiple collaborations, but I feel, especially in those moments, [the words] could lie on the page inert if it wasn’t with those brilliant actors doing the scene. I’m a rewriter. I rewrite a lot. We reworked the scripts a lot through production, and it can sometimes be hard for the actors as we change things. But that episode, and especially that long stretch in the middle, I wrote it relatively quickly. And then I tried to be very careful about what I revised because, I don’t often feel this, but it felt like it had a coherence in its incoherence that it felt appropriate, and I wanted to leave it rather raw.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13928702']Hopefully our insults and our verbal attacks are believable and characterful, but they’re often more carefully wrought and multi-clause and baroque and the simplicity of the language, the mixture of truth and untruth, the feeling towards the edge of language and what it can express all felt good in the early, early drafts and therefore [we] tried not to change it. And I tried not to change the last things that Logan said, once I sort of knew that they were the last things that Logan said, because I didn’t want them to have the form of a grandiloquent moment of speech, because that didn’t seem appropriate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Can you say a few words about the ongoing \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1172876800/writers-guild-calls-strike\">\u003cstrong>writers’ strike\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong> I think about it through the lens of \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, which has been basically well supported and a happy show. One of my most favorite parts of the show is the writers’ room. Our room is not one of these mini-rooms, it’s a big, full room and it runs for a long time. And then writers who have written in the writers’ room, many of them come to be on set. Those kinds of things, although they cost money, I think helped to make the show as good as it is, and there’s just a variety of writer who is likely to get cut out of the financial action unless the WGA gets at least some of what it’s asking for. So I’m supportive of the position.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rich: \u003c/strong>The fact is that as the business transitioned from the old network linear model to streaming model, writers are often left out in the cold financially and it’s quite unjust. And I hope they win the battle because they really deserve it and they really are underpaid. It’s hard for people to understand how anyone could be underpaid in show business in Hollywood, but actually it does happen as in any other industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2023 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=We+ask+the+creator+of+%27Succession%27+everything+you+wanted+to+know+about+the+finale&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Was Kendall going to jump? Why did we keep seeing Logan in the bathroom? Jesse Armstrong and Frank Rich answer it all.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The following interview includes plenty of spoilers for the series finale of ‘Succession’.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The much-anticipated series finale of HBO’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/1045640636/succession-recaps\">\u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>\u003c/a> answered one big question — who would succeed media mogul patriarch Logan Roy — but we still have more: Did the show creator know the end at the beginning? Why didn’t any of the Roy children wind up as CEO of the family conglomerate Waystar Royco? Was Kendall considering jumping into the river at the end? Why was the presidential election left unresolved? And why was Logan in the bathroom in his first and last scenes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jesse Armstrong is the show’s creator, showrunner and head writer. In the past, he has been reluctant to reveal much about \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>‘s plotlines or the characters’ motivations. But with the finale behind us, Armstrong is ready to talk. He spoke to Terry Gross, along with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525575857/veep-executive-producer-on-making-a-show-about-the-craven-desire-for-power\">Frank Rich\u003c/a>, an executive producer of the series.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for clarity and length. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Terry Gross: Why couldn’t any of the siblings take over the company? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Armstrong: \u003c/strong>If you were thinking about this as a business situation rather than a piece of drama, they might have slipped through, one of them, for a little while, for probably an unsatisfactory interregnum … as they tanked the share price. It could have happened, but in a drama this felt like the appropriate end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930051\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930051\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-800x450.jpe\" alt=\"A white man in a suit and a white woman wearing black sit in the back of a car, street lights visible through the back window. Her hand gently rests on his in between them.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-800x450.jpe 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-1020x574.jpe 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-160x90.jpe 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-768x432.jpe 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68-1536x864.jpe 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen-sarah-snook_wide-6a0ca1dda18abd6790982717db805a32b1fb2c68.jpe 1909w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Succession’ series creator Jesse Armstrong likens Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Shiv’s (Sarah Snook) hands in the final episode to the joining of “two pieces of porcelain.” \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do you see Shiv Roy at the end – as a prisoner who has weakened her position, or somebody who’s using all of her smarts to still have access to power? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>Everyone has their own view and I can tell you mine, which is that for me it was a moment of equality. Chilly, rather terrifying equality, but equality, which has never been the case in that relationship before. Tom has always been subservient. Now he has this status, but his status is contingent. That’s kind of what the whole episode has been about. Shiv’s status is as all the kids are – secure. It’s secure in a financial sense. She has billions of dollars. She has wealth that could never diminish, whatever happened to the world. And she also has a name, which will sort of haunt her and make her interesting, to a certain degree, for the rest of her life, and that can’t be taken away from her. Whereas Tom’s position could be taken away in the click of her fingers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>So for me, there’s a very terrifying equality in that, a remarkable dry hand on hand. It’s not really even human contact. It’s a sort of two pieces of porcelain or something. So that’s what it is for me. That isn’t what it would be for everyone. And certainly you could see the situation being a clever stratagem by which Shiv remains in play. Maybe that thought will occur to her tomorrow or the day after. But for me, the show’s ended at this point and the story is over and that’s where I think they end up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong> Frank Rich: \u003c/strong>I’m fascinated to hear Jesse come clean about it. I guess I experienced it as very transitional and very emotional. I felt that she was, in some ways, in emotional shock. When you look at the rapid fire of truly traumatic confrontations and events and the changing over of the business and all of that in a very compressed period of time, my feeling about her is that she’s leaving her options open. She does have this inheritance of a sort in terms of who she is, but also I just can’t imagine when she’s been through that with Kendall and she’s been through that with the company that she wanted to take over and been through everything with her husband, that she has a clear direction. So she’s in the moment, sort of. But there’s a kind of numbness. Part of this to me comes from Sarah [Snook]’s performance. It’s almost like she’s been traumatized, not maybe in the clinical sense, but just she’s in limbo. And I love the fact that it ends with that ambiguity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930052\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930052\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A white man in a dark blue shirt sits at a bar, martini glass in front of him.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/kieran-culkin_4-a24701dcda2e3653a3b52f22080abbfcccfd8246.jpg 1700w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The series finale of ‘Succession’ shows Roman (Kieran Culkin) for what he’s always been: a sad playboy. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The last shot of Roman Roy is of him drinking a martini alone at a bar after saying “We’re all bulls—.” Why did you place him at the bar? What does that say to you about Roman in the moment and in the future?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>The piece in the bar, there was more to it, a little bit more dialogue, but I think when we were in the edit room, Roman’s face, Kieran [Culkin]’s face was so eloquent that we just used a rather extraordinary set of expressions. … Kieran’s character, Roman, he ends up most particularly exactly where he started, which is living the life of a sort of sad playboy, I guess, and sipping a drink, which people might associate with his quasi-love of his life, Gerri, who we’ve often seen sipping a martini.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>In the last shot of the series, we see Kendall Roy sitting on a bench, staring at the Hudson River. Water is such a powerful symbol in the series. (Kendall nearly drowns in a pool in Season 3, and he’s haunted by a deadly car wreck in a river in Season 1.)\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>Did you know all along that the theme of water would also play out in the final scene? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>Oh, it’s such a fascinating, knotty question. I guess water can also mean baptism and cleansing and ablution … and a fun swim and splashing in the pool, and we’ve occasionally seen it used that way. It’s developed. There was no sort of image structure that was formulaically laid down at the beginning of the show. … And it was the genius of [director] Mark Mylod and the camera operators and Jeremy that took us right down to the tip of Battery Park, to the tip of Manhattan, and looking at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Do you think he’s contemplating ending his life? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>For me, no. … I think for me, Kendall, at the end, one of the things he lacks is even the freedom to determine his own course through life. The name and the wealth around him – to lots of us, obviously, it seems extraordinarily fortunate, and it is. But I do believe there is a certain kind of tragedy to a royal name, to a huge business name, to being a Disney or a Windsor or any of those kinds of names, and he can never, ever escape that. And one of the ways he can’t escape that is to have a bubble of protection around him … of money and human beings. In this case, he’s got his dad’s bodyguard right there with him. So even if he is contemplating it, I don’t think it could ever happen to him. And yeah, for me, that’s not the way the story goes for this kind of person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930059\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930059\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-800x532.png\" alt=\"An older man with white hair and beard sits in a leather armchair in an opulent living room. A younger man wearing an overcoat crouches before him.\" width=\"800\" height=\"532\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-800x532.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-1020x678.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-160x106.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-768x510.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM-1536x1021.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-05-at-10.55.51-AM.png 1568w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jeremy Strong, left, as Kendall Roy, and Brian Cox as Logan Roy in ‘Succession.’ \u003ccite>(Peter Kramer/HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>In an improvised take of that final scene that was not included in the final edit, Jeremy Strong climbs over the railing from the pedestrian side of the river to the riverside, looking as if he’s really maybe about to jump in. Were you there when he improvised that? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>Yeah. We were there. It was biting cold. I’m there every day, and certainly for that important scene. I was terrified. I was terrified that he might fall in and be injured. … He didn’t look like he was going to jump in. But once he climbed over that barrier — when you film, there are generally a lot of health and safety assessments made, and that was not our plan that day. And normally I know that if we’d even been thinking of that happening, we would have had boats and frogmen and all kinds of safety measures, which we didn’t have. So my first thought was for his physical safety as a human being, not anything about the character. That’s what I felt on the day. Good Lord, above.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rich:\u003c/strong> It was like breaking a barrier, walking through the fourth wall and it was bitterly cold on top of it. Also, everyone was eager for the cold reasons and also for scheduling reasons involving subsequent production, to be done with it. And I think Scott Nicholson, who played [bodyguard] Colin, was also somewhat alarmed and was functioning as a person as much as a character in that moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You haven’t allowed Kendall to grow. Every time I think he’s getting more mature or more responsible, he’s not. Every time I think he’s getting a conscience, he doesn’t. Why not let him grow? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>It’s not that I don’t think people are capable of change or growth. I guess I would say they happen rarely, slowly and not necessarily all in one direction, in that you’re just as likely to devolve as evolve as a person, unfortunately, I think. There’s a sort of sense about narrative, especially screenplay, that that’s what happens in a script: that people grow, they learn, and that is the shape of the script. And I would gently reject that, I guess. I don’t think that has to be the shape of the story. I don’t think it’s a true shape of all stories. Not that you can’t make a great story out of those things — and I’d like to write some of those — but that isn’t the story of this show. That doesn’t seem to be the truth of these people. And so we had to find story shapes which didn’t follow that particular shape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rich: \u003c/strong>I fundamentally believe that people don’t change that much in real life. Some people do. Sure. But a lot of people don’t, including a lot of people I just know in real life. But look at politics, which I also spent a lot of time looking at as a journalist: There was always a new Nixon. There’s always a political move where some major politician is going to change his spots. I’m talking about ideology. I’m talking about personality and the human quotient. And there’s an analog there, I think, with the corporate world, and people are who they are. And a lot of people, particularly people who want power, whether it be economic or political power, keep doing the same things. And certainly it’s true in the arena where we set our show. It’s not like Murdoch has ever changed, or Sumner Redstone ever changed in terms of how they operate as people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930054\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930054\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A man in a grey suit sits, feet up on a desk in front of him, with a facial expression that reflects being deep in thought.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/matthew-macfadyen_3_wide-e9b0535711dd27d06c4e793e5a340507e337a539.jpg 1816w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Frank Rich says that, in a line that didn’t make it into the final cut, someone describes Tom’s face as “sort of like a piece of Wonder Bread with a smile drawn on it.” \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>At what point did you know Tom would end up being the CEO of \u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>Waystar Royco, but he’d still be a puppet, that he’d be the figurehead, and Lukas Matsson\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>from GoJo would really be pulling the strings?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>One of the things I like in the show is for things to feel natural, to feel like you could read them in \u003cem>The Wall Street Journal\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Financial Times\u003c/em>, for them to feel like they fit, they’re congruent with the way that we see business, culture and politics going. And so in a way … it became obvious to me that [Tom] should take over. There are a few of these people who come after. … They have to have certain qualities, the person who can succeed from a founder, and I guess there are few examples in life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a guy, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/19/490573944/viacom-ceo-out-as-redstone-family-reasserts-control\">Philippe Dauman\u003c/a>, who took over from \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/375143072/media-titan-sumner-redstone-who-made-viacom-a-global-empire-dies-at-97\">Sumner Redstone\u003c/a> when Shari [Redstone] was also trying to take over in the Viacom CBS empire. He rather floated up and made himself very amenable to power. … We tried to take from all kinds of historical moments. I guess I also thought a little bit about Stalin coming through the middle after Lenin’s death and there being much more glamorous intellectual candidates — Trotsky and Zinoviev — but Stalin arranged things and then slipped through the middle. So there were a bunch of historical and business parallels that started to seem like they were pointing in Tom’s direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rich: \u003c/strong>I can’t say I was surprised. I mean, I’m sort of delighted, even though, in a line that didn’t make it to the final cut [someone says Tom’s] face is “sort of like a piece of Wonder Bread with a smile drawn on it.” He’s an empty suit, as is said. But, in Hollywood, in the ’30s, in the media companies at that time, it was the joke that “the son-in-law also rises.” And so in some ways it was completely plausible to me. And I also knew that these three kids could not take over for all the reasons we know, the various layers of them as people, as business people, all of it. So yeah, I thought it was an exciting, creative turn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The presidential election isn’t decided yet when the series ends because there was a fire in Milwaukee and ballots were burned. Why did you want to end the series without the election actually being resolved?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong:\u003c/strong> I wrestled with this one quite a lot. I always knew that I wanted to have an election during the show because we’ve seen these characters and we’re interested in their psychology, hopefully. I certainly am. And that’s one strand of the show. But I don’t think we’d be interested in them if they ran a wallpaper factory. It’s because of their influence through the media that they were fascinating to me, and so I wanted to show that, at its most important moment. But I also felt that, especially as a British person, that it wasn’t appropriate for the show to declare on what even our fictional world we think is going to be the fate of the republic. So it was important to me that we left it where it would be. And we worked with very skilled political operatives to figure out the right configuration of story that would both put ATN, their news organization, in a powerful position to affect things, but also would leave things poised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people find the episode sort of gut-wrenching and traumatic, and I can imagine because it’s a very serious time for America. I didn’t feel it was appropriate for us to say which way we think things will go. So that was why we left it poised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930055\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930055\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"An older man in a suit walks confidently away from a helicopter. He has white hair, a white beard and is wearing sunglasses.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/brian-cox_wide-dafe26de809f314118e955216ec773f6ead23b35.jpg 1905w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jesse Armstrong doesn’t think anyone would have been interested in the story of the Roy family if they’d run a wallpaper factory. “It’s because of their influence through the media that they were fascinating to me,” he says. Above, Brian Cox as media mogul Logan Roy. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> is a very hard to describe mix of satire and drama and tragedy. Did you want to bring in the comedy slowly and not kind of announce itself right away? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>The tone of the show is kind of how I write. Not that I can’t try and write in different tones, but this one was what seemed appropriate to this show. And I can kind of try and back-engineer how it came about. But the truth is, it just came out, the voices of these characters. … I’m thinking of that George Orwell quote about why I write, which is “there’s some lie I want to expose.” And I guess one impulse was that we have a certain view of these corporate titans in our culture, and it’s sometimes that they are very, very brilliant and can do no wrong. And I don’t want to diminish their talents completely. I don’t think I could do what they do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But I think that they also have good fortune and often have good fortunes behind them. Rupert Murdoch had many millions in newspapers already before he started. So I guess one of the things I was curious about was showing the ludicrous, the comic, the incongruous, the gross parts of these gilded lives. And so maybe that’s where the impulse to make sure that there was comedy in there came from, because that’s a good register to try and approach some of that stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The series begins and ends for Logan in the bathroom. The first time we see him, he pees on the rug. Then he dies on his jet in the bathroom. So that seems to be a motif, Logan in the bathroom. Why? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>One thing is that comedy often works better in small spaces. And so if a scene isn’t working, it’s sometimes worth trying: putting it in a smaller space and seeing what happens when people have to be in each other’s physicality. Apart from that, I guess there is something about, maybe it’s something childish about seeing kings and queens on the toilet. In the U.K., it was meant to be a hard thing to imagine: the late queen being on the toilet. I guess there may be something childlike about seeing great figures doing what all of us must do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930056\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930056\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A woman and two men, all white, huddle around a coffee table, listening closely to a message being relayed.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/sarah-snook-jeremy-strong-kieran-culkin_wide-9d10cc88c8cbc9c29b68fcab0080840d1aa48b49.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shiv (Sarah Snook), Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) struggle to be taken seriously by their father and the upper level cronies at Waystar in Season 4’s “Honeymoon States” episode. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You have unique writing styles for each of the siblings and for Logan. Can you talk a little bit about coming up with each of their voices? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>It struck me that powerful people often don’t say so much. And Logan says probably many fewer words than his less powerful colleagues and people who surround him. Indeed, it’s probably true that the people with the least power speak the most. When you think about Tom (before he assumed power) and Greg, they have these great torrents of words because they’re trying to fill in the holes and equivocate and countermand what they’ve just said to precisely express themselves, because they’re worried the power is going to take a dim view of them. So there’s something about literally the quantity of words that you speak and also the volume. Power can often be very quiet and make you lean in until it explodes and makes you lean out. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>We hear [Kendall] first listening to rap music and he has a desire to hit a sort of colloquial but buzzword-infused [way of speaking]. I think he likes language. I think he wants to use interesting language. He’s not a terrible performer. Some people find his rap utterly risible. I find it comic, but also not bad. I think he has a certain verbal felicity, a certain verbal interest, and sometimes that goes over the edge into being ludicrous. Shiv, her tragedy has been that she has sought to modulate her every performance in the sense of what she’s doing in the world to keep her options open. And so there’s a sense in which she does that verbally as well. Roman is explosive and the most close to being a truth teller in that kind of jester role where he can say the unsayable and then claim that he didn’t say it or didn’t mean it. It’s a very powerful position once you start to be able to say, “I didn’t mean it,” after everything, every true thing that you say.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ED2pSguRn7U'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/ED2pSguRn7U'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Roy siblings’ cousin Greg has a mixture of cluelessness and formality when he’s on the witness stand during the hearings about the Waystar cruise line sexual harassment scandal. At one point, while being questioned by a senator, Greg answers, “If it is to be said, so it be. So it is.” Can you talk about Greg’s strangely formal way of speaking there?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong:\u003c/strong> I think there’s a little bit of the kind of 18th century in there, that sort of courtier vibe. But I think there’s also a class thing there, which, you know, is the phrase “hyper correction,” where people who are outside their normal class or social arena sometimes end up being idiotic because they’re trying to be too proper. It happens in our English, class-obsessed society, when people try to change their vocal pitch and nature to try and fit in with posher people and you hypercorrect, and then you become ludicrous by throwing in those extra words or reversing the order and doing things which you think sound like they might have a formality, which is appropriate, but ends up being nonsense. So it’s a very nice thing in life to be comfortable with how you speak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan is on his way to Norway to complete the deal with GoJo when he dies after suffering some kind of cardiac episode in the plane bathroom. Tom is on the plane and calls the siblings and they each say their goodbyes on the phone to him, even though it seems he’s already dead. Have you ever been in a position like that, of saying your goodbye on the phone?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>No, honestly, I haven’t. I’ve known sad things and I’ve known people who suffered sad things, and people were generous in the writers room sharing thoughts about those areas, things they knew. … I don’t believe you have to have been through something like that precisely to be able to write it. Often, the terrible thing we imagine in the future can be as vivid as the thing we’ve experienced. … There is something about the modern era, which is that often sad, bad news comes at us like that from nowhere and hits us from nowhere. … The modern sadnesses often happen in this rather disembodied way. And then you’re left in a nowhere state where you’re physically disconnected from the events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930057\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930057\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man and. woman on a couch sit, looking concerned. Another man in a suit sits opposite them, slumped forward. A fourth man stands nearby. They are in a sitting room area of a yacht.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/fisher-stevens-kieran-culkin-jeremy-strong-sarah-snook_custom-9a66111cccf03ed30b96adbc44d50bc6d0fa7f9b.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Roy siblings huddle with the Waystar communications team to craft a statement after learning of their father’s sudden death. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You really capture the not knowing what to say aspect in a situation like that — not knowing how to say goodbye, but also the conflicted love-hate relationship they have with their father. Can you talk a little bit about writing those goodbyes? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong>The whole show is such multiple collaborations, but I feel, especially in those moments, [the words] could lie on the page inert if it wasn’t with those brilliant actors doing the scene. I’m a rewriter. I rewrite a lot. We reworked the scripts a lot through production, and it can sometimes be hard for the actors as we change things. But that episode, and especially that long stretch in the middle, I wrote it relatively quickly. And then I tried to be very careful about what I revised because, I don’t often feel this, but it felt like it had a coherence in its incoherence that it felt appropriate, and I wanted to leave it rather raw.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Hopefully our insults and our verbal attacks are believable and characterful, but they’re often more carefully wrought and multi-clause and baroque and the simplicity of the language, the mixture of truth and untruth, the feeling towards the edge of language and what it can express all felt good in the early, early drafts and therefore [we] tried not to change it. And I tried not to change the last things that Logan said, once I sort of knew that they were the last things that Logan said, because I didn’t want them to have the form of a grandiloquent moment of speech, because that didn’t seem appropriate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Can you say a few words about the ongoing \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1172876800/writers-guild-calls-strike\">\u003cstrong>writers’ strike\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Armstrong: \u003c/strong> I think about it through the lens of \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, which has been basically well supported and a happy show. One of my most favorite parts of the show is the writers’ room. Our room is not one of these mini-rooms, it’s a big, full room and it runs for a long time. And then writers who have written in the writers’ room, many of them come to be on set. Those kinds of things, although they cost money, I think helped to make the show as good as it is, and there’s just a variety of writer who is likely to get cut out of the financial action unless the WGA gets at least some of what it’s asking for. So I’m supportive of the position.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rich: \u003c/strong>The fact is that as the business transitioned from the old network linear model to streaming model, writers are often left out in the cold financially and it’s quite unjust. And I hope they win the battle because they really deserve it and they really are underpaid. It’s hard for people to understand how anyone could be underpaid in show business in Hollywood, but actually it does happen as in any other industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2023 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=We+ask+the+creator+of+%27Succession%27+everything+you+wanted+to+know+about+the+finale&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Best Picket Signs of the Hollywood Writers’ Strike",
"headTitle": "The Best Picket Signs of the Hollywood Writers’ Strike | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>As the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1172876800/writers-guild-calls-strike\">Writers Guild of America strike\u003c/a> continues into its third day, the jokes aren’t on late night TV anymore — they’re on the picket lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 11,000 movie and television writers have stopped working after contract negotiations stalled out between their union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association that represents Hollywood’s studios and production companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13928545']\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173552824/what-writers-strike-means-for-viewers\">The standoff\u003c/a> could last months and shut down Hollywood production. (The \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173439467/writers-guild-strike-2023-comparison-2007\">last writers’ strike\u003c/a> lasted from November 2007 into February 2008.) Some of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.wga.org/uploadedfiles/members/member_info/contract-2023/WGA_proposals.pdf\">sticking points include\u003c/a> questions over staffing levels for new TV programs and income from episodes aired on streaming services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the strike kicked off Tuesday, hundreds of writers have picketed in the Los Angeles area and in New York, outside the studios and offices of Netflix, NBCUniversal, Disney, Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros. and others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the signs were jokes about the artificial intelligence service \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1152481564/we-asked-the-new-ai-to-do-some-simple-rocket-science-it-crashed-and-burned\">ChatGPT\u003c/a>, the wealth of studio executives and many, many references to the HBO hit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/03/22/1165032183/succession-season-4-review\">\u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Here are some of our favorites:\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928704\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928704\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-800x533.jpg\" alt='Protesters on a picket line. Signs read: \"Writers Guild of America on Strike!\" and \"Without writers, Meredith Grey would not be a surgeon, no students could attend Abbot Elementary and Logan Roy would be alive!\"' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A picketer at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles carries a sign with references to the television shows ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Abbott Elementary’ and ‘Succession.’ \u003ccite>(VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/NazaninNour/status/1653916450858446848\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928705\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928705\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-800x533.jpg\" alt='Protesters on picket lines carry signs that read: \"Succession without writers is just The Apprentice — and look how well that turned out\" and \"Wrote ChatGPT This.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">On left, a picket sign outside Netflix headquarters in Hollywood. On right, writer K.C. Scott pickets outside Amazon Studios in Culver City, California. \u003ccite>(Mandalit del Barco/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/EmmaTolkin/status/1653496828665683969\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928706\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928706\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-800x604.jpg\" alt=\"A protester on a picket line holds up a sign that reads: "You're gonna be the villains in the limited series about this!"\" width=\"800\" height=\"604\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-800x604.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-1020x770.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-160x121.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-768x580.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-1536x1160.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Outside Netflix headquarters in Hollywood on the first day of the writer’s strike. \u003ccite>(Mandalit del Barco/NPR News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/MasonLieberman/status/1653915636660326402\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928707\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928707\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123050775069_slide-96856cb58da69b28b3d34d46816cce5676562b80-scaled-e1683304948731-800x533.jpg\" alt='A Writers Guild of America striker holds up a sign that says: \"You came up with Quibi.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123050775069_slide-96856cb58da69b28b3d34d46816cce5676562b80-scaled-e1683304948731-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123050775069_slide-96856cb58da69b28b3d34d46816cce5676562b80-scaled-e1683304948731-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123050775069_slide-96856cb58da69b28b3d34d46816cce5676562b80-scaled-e1683304948731-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123050775069_slide-96856cb58da69b28b3d34d46816cce5676562b80-scaled-e1683304948731-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123050775069_slide-96856cb58da69b28b3d34d46816cce5676562b80-scaled-e1683304948731-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123050775069_slide-96856cb58da69b28b3d34d46816cce5676562b80-scaled-e1683304948731.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Writer Jono Matt holds a sign referring to the short-lived streaming service Quibi at the WGA picket line outside Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank. \u003ccite>(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/jennyyangtv/status/1653856504821456897\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928708\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928708\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123731722844_slide-ef6ba136fb3116c851e9b8d73aa76ae9926e712a-scaled-e1683305121407-800x533.jpg\" alt='Writers Guild of America picketers gather. One holds up a sign reading: \"I told ChatGPT to write a picket sign and it sucked.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123731722844_slide-ef6ba136fb3116c851e9b8d73aa76ae9926e712a-scaled-e1683305121407-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123731722844_slide-ef6ba136fb3116c851e9b8d73aa76ae9926e712a-scaled-e1683305121407-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123731722844_slide-ef6ba136fb3116c851e9b8d73aa76ae9926e712a-scaled-e1683305121407-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123731722844_slide-ef6ba136fb3116c851e9b8d73aa76ae9926e712a-scaled-e1683305121407-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123731722844_slide-ef6ba136fb3116c851e9b8d73aa76ae9926e712a-scaled-e1683305121407-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/ap23123731722844_slide-ef6ba136fb3116c851e9b8d73aa76ae9926e712a-scaled-e1683305121407.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A WGA protest outside the Netflix headquarters in New York City. \u003ccite>(AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/marinarachael/status/1653560546405515264\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+best+picket+signs+of+the+Hollywood+writers%27+strike&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Union members let loose with quips to studio executives, as they picket outside companies like Netflix, Sony and NBCUniversal.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1172876800/writers-guild-calls-strike\">Writers Guild of America strike\u003c/a> continues into its third day, the jokes aren’t on late night TV anymore — they’re on the picket lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 11,000 movie and television writers have stopped working after contract negotiations stalled out between their union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association that represents Hollywood’s studios and production companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173552824/what-writers-strike-means-for-viewers\">The standoff\u003c/a> could last months and shut down Hollywood production. (The \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173439467/writers-guild-strike-2023-comparison-2007\">last writers’ strike\u003c/a> lasted from November 2007 into February 2008.) Some of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.wga.org/uploadedfiles/members/member_info/contract-2023/WGA_proposals.pdf\">sticking points include\u003c/a> questions over staffing levels for new TV programs and income from episodes aired on streaming services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the strike kicked off Tuesday, hundreds of writers have picketed in the Los Angeles area and in New York, outside the studios and offices of Netflix, NBCUniversal, Disney, Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros. and others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the signs were jokes about the artificial intelligence service \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1152481564/we-asked-the-new-ai-to-do-some-simple-rocket-science-it-crashed-and-burned\">ChatGPT\u003c/a>, the wealth of studio executives and many, many references to the HBO hit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/03/22/1165032183/succession-season-4-review\">\u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Here are some of our favorites:\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928704\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928704\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-800x533.jpg\" alt='Protesters on a picket line. Signs read: \"Writers Guild of America on Strike!\" and \"Without writers, Meredith Grey would not be a surgeon, no students could attend Abbot Elementary and Logan Roy would be alive!\"' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/gettyimages-1252543810_slide-577c834bf47c4906e7f520c00d90048464f68ca8-scaled-e1683304555714.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A picketer at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles carries a sign with references to the television shows ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Abbott Elementary’ and ‘Succession.’ \u003ccite>(VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928705\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928705\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-800x533.jpg\" alt='Protesters on picket lines carry signs that read: \"Succession without writers is just The Apprentice — and look how well that turned out\" and \"Wrote ChatGPT This.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wga2_slide-5485825442cc50113380e33d2a19111e2c593fb6-scaled-e1683304610284.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">On left, a picket sign outside Netflix headquarters in Hollywood. On right, writer K.C. Scott pickets outside Amazon Studios in Culver City, California. \u003ccite>(Mandalit del Barco/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928706\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928706\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-800x604.jpg\" alt=\"A protester on a picket line holds up a sign that reads: "You're gonna be the villains in the limited series about this!"\" width=\"800\" height=\"604\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-800x604.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-1020x770.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-160x121.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-768x580.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294-1536x1160.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/villain-actual-size-_custom-ad44f83caf354b57b6f7b15420022de3573a3e43-scaled-e1683304827294.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Outside Netflix headquarters in Hollywood on the first day of the writer’s strike. \u003ccite>(Mandalit del Barco/NPR News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "How to Write Film Music That Stops Time",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">T\u003c/span>here’s a standout scene in \u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em>, Barry Jenkins’ widely acclaimed 2016 coming-of-age film, that doesn’t have the typical “pivotal moment” hallmarks of an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCQn_FkFElI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oscars Best Picture winner\u003c/a>. There’s not a big speech. Not a lot really happens, even.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the scene in which Juan (Mahershala Ali) teaches Little (Alex Hibbert) how to swim is rich text for other reasons. There’s the painterly light, athletic camera work. The symbolism is somehow both striking and understated — a rare glimpse of Black masculinity as a nurturing force, as well as what Jenkins has called a “spiritual transference” between these two characters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the music. Bright, anxious violins pick up speed as the figurative baptism progresses; over the course of a two-minute piece, composer Nicholas Britell’s score reflects the beauty and danger of the ocean, as well as the complex sea of emotions in our young protagonist: determination, hope and fear. I dare you to find me someone who didn’t sit in the movie theater holding their breath for the entire scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6yMItXePG8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the seven years since \u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em>’s release, with films like \u003cem>If Beale Street Could Talk\u003c/em> and the limited series \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em>, the partnership between Jenkins and Britell has produced numerous breathtaking moments like this. Jenkins tells stories of Black America, consistently turning an artful, unflinching eye on protagonists who are limited or literally trapped by injustice, by poverty and incarceration. And while Jenkins’ writing and direction are deeply empathetic, it’s often Britell’s scores — soaring, evocative works that apply R&B and hip-hop production techniques to classical music — that grant these characters their full humanity, reminding us that even people living in the most tragic of circumstances experience a vast range of emotion, including love and yearning along with anguish.[aside postid='forum_2010101892493']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A horn line swells, and we remember — oh, right. Every single person I meet has an entire universe of pain and beauty and unfulfilled dreams swirling inside them at all times. And then we weep uncontrollably into our popcorn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Britell, a classically trained pianist, has been a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfsymphony.org/About-SFS/Collaborative-Partners\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">collaborative partner\u003c/a>” with the San Francisco Symphony since 2018. But his April 14–15 events with Jenkins at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/soundbox\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SoundBox\u003c/a>, with Symphony musicians performing works from \u003cem>Moonlight,\u003c/em> \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em>, will present his most personal collaboration yet with the organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emma Silvers: Barry, your projects have always shown a love of music, even going back to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/24154/medicine_for_melancholy\">\u003cem>Medicine for Melancholy\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Can you talk about where music lives in your writing process? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins:\u003c/strong> Music has always been part of it. I mean, I’ve always been surrounded by music — I grew up in a household where, even though we were so extremely poor, there was always music playing. Or I would go to the flea market and get tapes — and this is terrible as someone who now makes a living from copywritten material — but people would make these cassette tapes with all these different songs on them, and you could get a tape for like five bucks, as opposed to an album, which cost 15 or 20 bucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13844783']And I’ve always listened to music while I write. When I first got to college and started pursuing creative writing and working on film, I would go to this café to work. And between coffee, wine and music, I found that I could slip into a place where I could translate the feeling of what was happening in the scene in my head to the page.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was also when I was discovering the filmmakers who became foundational to my idea of what cinema was, people like Claire Denis and Wong Kar-wai, and they used music in a very open, very clear way. In film school, I was taught music is meant to be in the background of a film, which is kind of making it elevator music. So I was like, \u003cem>No, no, no:\u003c/em> I’ve seen films where you can use this combination of sound and images and score to really elevate what the character was feeling. That’s the place it’s always had for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927608\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927608\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-800x530.jpg\" alt=\"a black and white photo of a young Black man in a dark collared shirt with glasses, smiling at the camera \" width=\"800\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-800x530.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-1020x676.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-768x509.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-1536x1018.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-2048x1358.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-1920x1273.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Barry Jenkins’ San Francisco-set debut feature, ‘Medicine for Melancholy,’ will be released by The Criterion Collection in June, with new commentary from the filmmaker. \u003ccite>(Matt Morris)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You’ve both spoken about not wanting to tell the audience how to feel, that it’s more about music that sounds the way the characters feel — kind of achieving interiority through music. Which, especially as a non-musician, seems mystical to me. Can you talk about what it looks like to get into that headspace and compose for different characters, especially people with very different lived experiences from your own?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell:\u003c/strong> It can \u003cem>feel\u003c/em> mystical; I also use the word “alchemy” a lot. And so much of it is about this incredibly close collaboration, searching \u003cem>together\u003c/em> for things — I’m never working alone. Which is why it’s so special that Barry and I are doing this show; we get into this stream of consciousness when we’re in the room together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em>, for example, Barry said “I’m hearing brass and horns.” So I started thinking about the scene where Tish and Fonny have finally been able to rent that apartment, and they’re in the street and they start shouting to the sky with joy. I think a lot about shapes. I feel that the shapes of things in music actually affect us all in similar ways. So, OK, I want the music to go upward — to shout to the sky. Well, what if it’s a trumpet shouting to the sky? And then I start doing experiments with brass, French horns, clarinet, trumpet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet, and I kind of go off into the wilderness and try things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, through experimenting together, we realized it was missing cellos. Like, \u003cem>oh, the cellos are the feeling of love.\u003c/em> And all of a sudden, if I take the chords that I was playing with brass but the cellos play them, everything feels different. It’s never, oh, what key signature is this, or what type of chord is this. It ultimately always comes back to feelings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmK71ZfaZO4\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Audiences have these incredibly poignant, personal responses to these scores, where the music seems to help them access complicated feelings about their own lives. Have you seen \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWQ7neoBhCE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the comments\u003c/a> on “Agape” on YouTube?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins:\u003c/strong> They’re nuts. (Laughs.) Nuts! Way more people have listened to that piece than have even heard of this film. Way more people are going to hear that song than will ever watch \u003cem>If Beale Street Could Talk\u003c/em>. And I remember being there at the moment of its creation, in this really diligent but simple process of chasing what that moment felt like, both within the film and within the characters’ lives. It’s this very aspirational moment, when Tish is at her most hopeful, like everything is on the table for this family. And Nick just did this thing where he had the song keep reaching \u003cem>up and up and up\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Barry Jenkins\"]‘[James] Baldwin was … bottling this nuclear atom of the hopes, the aspirations, the yearning, the melancholy of Black life in America. And Nick somehow found a way to get in there and really translate that into music.’[/pullquote]But the way that piece of music connects with people, and this is me saying this, not Nick — these are Black films and this is Black music. It really is. And it’s amazing to me there are white people all over the world, we’ve seen this on Instagram, who walk down the aisle to this piece of music. I say it’s Black music because what Mr. Baldwin was writing, and what Regina and Stephan and KiKi are doing in that sequence, is bottling this nuclear atom of the hopes, the aspirations, the yearning, the melancholy of Black life in America. And Nick somehow found a way to get in there and really translate that into music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I get a little tipsy and I go read those comments on YouTube, I see that the whole journey of making that film, even if people only accessed it through hearing this one song, would have been worth it. Because the way people respond to the feeling of that music … I mean, sometimes it knocks me down. If you want to know the power, the effect, the legitimate movement that a piece of score can create, go look up that thing on YouTube and the things that complete strangers — who have no skin in the game on how successful this film is or isn’t! — and they’re just pouring themselves out about what this piece of music means to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927605\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927605\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"a young white man with light brown hair in a black button-down shirt and glasses looks down away from the camera\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nicholas Britell’s other scores include collaborations with director Adam McKay, including ‘The Big Short’ and ‘Don’t Look Up,’ as well as the HBO show ‘Succession.’ \u003ccite>(Emma McIntyre)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell:\u003c/strong> I’ll just add that the music that I write with Barry is unlike anything else that I write. In some ways, I think Barry lets me tap into different emotions, and there are certain feelings that I think we are both drawn to. And I get to figure out: what is the sound of that? So much of what we do is experimentation — Barry will like a kernel of something, so we follow that, but we don’t know where we’re going. Just that when we’re there, we’ll know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em> were both so rooted in Miami and New York, respectively, the cities where they took place. But \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em> takes us to so many different locations, and then also has surreal elements. How do you find the sound for something of that scope, especially without the anchor of a specific, singular time or place?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13897166']\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell:\u003c/strong> The scale and scope and difficulty of \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em> was unlike anything I’d ever done. I remember Barry saying to me, you know, each state is a different state of mind for Cora — and we thought of it almost like different planets. Because that journey is unlike \u003cem>anything\u003c/em>. As a comparison, it’s not \u003cem>Succession,\u003c/em> where, from episode 1 to 2, we’re probably in New York City, probably in the Roy family. This is like we’re in a different \u003cem>universe\u003c/em>. We’re in a different dimension, possibly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the sonic experimentation, just the amount that we were going to push… we look at \u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em>, where there was the idea of using \u003ca href=\"https://ra.co/features/4040\">chopped and screwed\u003c/a> as a technique, or in \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em>, where we’re taking the sounds of love and harming them so they’re broken and they become a sound of injustice. On \u003cem>Underground Railroad\u003c/em>, it was times 100. How do we push things to feel beyond what we can even imagine?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, what is the architecture? Because if you establish a musical idea at the very beginning of a film, part of the beauty, hopefully, is that if it comes back later, you have a memory of having felt it — even just subconsciously. So multiplying that across 10 episodes, when do we echo back? I remember showing Barry some new ideas at one point, and he was like, ‘You know what? No new ideas. We’re done.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUIo56q-Qw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins: \u003c/strong>\u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em> was definitely less of a literal journey, but to me it was also a much more clear emotional one: every state is different, because Cora’s mental state has shifted in addition to the setting. What Nick said about planets — I love that because different planets have different atmospheres, and these soundscapes are like those atmospheres. Venus is not like Mars, you know, it’s got to be completely different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And we’re also responding to the world around us. [At one point during production] Nick and Caitlin, his wife, who’s a cellist, had moved out to L.A., and Nick, do you remember Caitlin took up this hobby of birdwatching?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell: \u003c/strong>She’s still doing it. She’s an avid birder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins:\u003c/strong> She had all these feeders around, so there were these hummingbirds always around the studio. And I was thinking the other day, Nick, about the track “Fireflies.” And there’s a harp that’s played really fast, and to me, that’s the hummingbird wings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927602\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927602\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"a crowd of people sits watching classical musicians perform in a dark club-like space with large artworks projected onto the walls and ceiling\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘SoundBox: Modern Sanctuary,’ conducted by Edwin Outwater in February 2020. \u003ccite>(Mike Grittani/Grittani Creative)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you want people to know going into these SoundBox shows?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell:\u003c/strong> These performances are something Barry and I have never really done. While we’ve played \u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em> live to picture before with orchestras, we have never actually performed in the authentic forms of the film with the original orchestrations. This is something we’ve been talking about since these were first written — like, how could we do this? \u003cem>Can\u003c/em> we do this? Because, for example, \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em> is as much an orchestration exercise, with these different instrument colors, as it is about these very special reverbs at times, where you hear the sounds sort of floating and soaring and swirling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins: \u003c/strong>We have heard stories about the reverb quality of SoundBox and we are hoping to put it through its paces. We’ve heard it’s legit. And the cats that work there are out to prove to us that it’s legit, so we’re pushing the boundaries with this concert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ll also say — I moved to the Bay at a time in my life when I was incredibly down on myself, and I went through some ups and downs there. And I’d walk past the Symphony all the time, and I just never thought … There are going to be images of Black folks projected all throughout this show. These folks are going to be playing music that I think organically reflects the experience of Black people. And I just never, never thought there was a world in which that would ever happen. It’s gonna be very cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>‘SoundBox: In Conversation With Nicholas Britell and Barry Jenkins’ takes place at 9 p.m. on Friday, April 14 and Saturday, April 15 at the San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox (300 Franklin St., San Francisco). Tickets start at $99; \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2022-23/SBX-NicholasBritell\">details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Barry Jenkins and Nicholas Britell discuss the alchemy behind their breathtaking scores for 'Moonlight' and 'If Beale Street Could Talk.'",
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"title": "Q&A: Barry Jenkins and Nicholas Britell Discuss 'Moonlight,' 'If Beale Street Could Talk' | KQED",
"description": "The director and composer reveal what goes into a breathtaking film score. The two appear in San Francisco April 14–15.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">T\u003c/span>here’s a standout scene in \u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em>, Barry Jenkins’ widely acclaimed 2016 coming-of-age film, that doesn’t have the typical “pivotal moment” hallmarks of an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCQn_FkFElI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oscars Best Picture winner\u003c/a>. There’s not a big speech. Not a lot really happens, even.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the scene in which Juan (Mahershala Ali) teaches Little (Alex Hibbert) how to swim is rich text for other reasons. There’s the painterly light, athletic camera work. The symbolism is somehow both striking and understated — a rare glimpse of Black masculinity as a nurturing force, as well as what Jenkins has called a “spiritual transference” between these two characters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the music. Bright, anxious violins pick up speed as the figurative baptism progresses; over the course of a two-minute piece, composer Nicholas Britell’s score reflects the beauty and danger of the ocean, as well as the complex sea of emotions in our young protagonist: determination, hope and fear. I dare you to find me someone who didn’t sit in the movie theater holding their breath for the entire scene.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/z6yMItXePG8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/z6yMItXePG8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In the seven years since \u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em>’s release, with films like \u003cem>If Beale Street Could Talk\u003c/em> and the limited series \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em>, the partnership between Jenkins and Britell has produced numerous breathtaking moments like this. Jenkins tells stories of Black America, consistently turning an artful, unflinching eye on protagonists who are limited or literally trapped by injustice, by poverty and incarceration. And while Jenkins’ writing and direction are deeply empathetic, it’s often Britell’s scores — soaring, evocative works that apply R&B and hip-hop production techniques to classical music — that grant these characters their full humanity, reminding us that even people living in the most tragic of circumstances experience a vast range of emotion, including love and yearning along with anguish.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A horn line swells, and we remember — oh, right. Every single person I meet has an entire universe of pain and beauty and unfulfilled dreams swirling inside them at all times. And then we weep uncontrollably into our popcorn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Britell, a classically trained pianist, has been a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfsymphony.org/About-SFS/Collaborative-Partners\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">collaborative partner\u003c/a>” with the San Francisco Symphony since 2018. But his April 14–15 events with Jenkins at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/soundbox\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SoundBox\u003c/a>, with Symphony musicians performing works from \u003cem>Moonlight,\u003c/em> \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em>, will present his most personal collaboration yet with the organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emma Silvers: Barry, your projects have always shown a love of music, even going back to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/24154/medicine_for_melancholy\">\u003cem>Medicine for Melancholy\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Can you talk about where music lives in your writing process? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins:\u003c/strong> Music has always been part of it. I mean, I’ve always been surrounded by music — I grew up in a household where, even though we were so extremely poor, there was always music playing. Or I would go to the flea market and get tapes — and this is terrible as someone who now makes a living from copywritten material — but people would make these cassette tapes with all these different songs on them, and you could get a tape for like five bucks, as opposed to an album, which cost 15 or 20 bucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And I’ve always listened to music while I write. When I first got to college and started pursuing creative writing and working on film, I would go to this café to work. And between coffee, wine and music, I found that I could slip into a place where I could translate the feeling of what was happening in the scene in my head to the page.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was also when I was discovering the filmmakers who became foundational to my idea of what cinema was, people like Claire Denis and Wong Kar-wai, and they used music in a very open, very clear way. In film school, I was taught music is meant to be in the background of a film, which is kind of making it elevator music. So I was like, \u003cem>No, no, no:\u003c/em> I’ve seen films where you can use this combination of sound and images and score to really elevate what the character was feeling. That’s the place it’s always had for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927608\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927608\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-800x530.jpg\" alt=\"a black and white photo of a young Black man in a dark collared shirt with glasses, smiling at the camera \" width=\"800\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-800x530.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-1020x676.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-768x509.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-1536x1018.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-2048x1358.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/3519cb71-3220-4c5f-bd61-a040847310ed-1920x1273.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Barry Jenkins’ San Francisco-set debut feature, ‘Medicine for Melancholy,’ will be released by The Criterion Collection in June, with new commentary from the filmmaker. \u003ccite>(Matt Morris)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You’ve both spoken about not wanting to tell the audience how to feel, that it’s more about music that sounds the way the characters feel — kind of achieving interiority through music. Which, especially as a non-musician, seems mystical to me. Can you talk about what it looks like to get into that headspace and compose for different characters, especially people with very different lived experiences from your own?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell:\u003c/strong> It can \u003cem>feel\u003c/em> mystical; I also use the word “alchemy” a lot. And so much of it is about this incredibly close collaboration, searching \u003cem>together\u003c/em> for things — I’m never working alone. Which is why it’s so special that Barry and I are doing this show; we get into this stream of consciousness when we’re in the room together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em>, for example, Barry said “I’m hearing brass and horns.” So I started thinking about the scene where Tish and Fonny have finally been able to rent that apartment, and they’re in the street and they start shouting to the sky with joy. I think a lot about shapes. I feel that the shapes of things in music actually affect us all in similar ways. So, OK, I want the music to go upward — to shout to the sky. Well, what if it’s a trumpet shouting to the sky? And then I start doing experiments with brass, French horns, clarinet, trumpet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet, and I kind of go off into the wilderness and try things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, through experimenting together, we realized it was missing cellos. Like, \u003cem>oh, the cellos are the feeling of love.\u003c/em> And all of a sudden, if I take the chords that I was playing with brass but the cellos play them, everything feels different. It’s never, oh, what key signature is this, or what type of chord is this. It ultimately always comes back to feelings.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/mmK71ZfaZO4'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/mmK71ZfaZO4'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Audiences have these incredibly poignant, personal responses to these scores, where the music seems to help them access complicated feelings about their own lives. Have you seen \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWQ7neoBhCE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the comments\u003c/a> on “Agape” on YouTube?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins:\u003c/strong> They’re nuts. (Laughs.) Nuts! Way more people have listened to that piece than have even heard of this film. Way more people are going to hear that song than will ever watch \u003cem>If Beale Street Could Talk\u003c/em>. And I remember being there at the moment of its creation, in this really diligent but simple process of chasing what that moment felt like, both within the film and within the characters’ lives. It’s this very aspirational moment, when Tish is at her most hopeful, like everything is on the table for this family. And Nick just did this thing where he had the song keep reaching \u003cem>up and up and up\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘[James] Baldwin was … bottling this nuclear atom of the hopes, the aspirations, the yearning, the melancholy of Black life in America. And Nick somehow found a way to get in there and really translate that into music.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But the way that piece of music connects with people, and this is me saying this, not Nick — these are Black films and this is Black music. It really is. And it’s amazing to me there are white people all over the world, we’ve seen this on Instagram, who walk down the aisle to this piece of music. I say it’s Black music because what Mr. Baldwin was writing, and what Regina and Stephan and KiKi are doing in that sequence, is bottling this nuclear atom of the hopes, the aspirations, the yearning, the melancholy of Black life in America. And Nick somehow found a way to get in there and really translate that into music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I get a little tipsy and I go read those comments on YouTube, I see that the whole journey of making that film, even if people only accessed it through hearing this one song, would have been worth it. Because the way people respond to the feeling of that music … I mean, sometimes it knocks me down. If you want to know the power, the effect, the legitimate movement that a piece of score can create, go look up that thing on YouTube and the things that complete strangers — who have no skin in the game on how successful this film is or isn’t! — and they’re just pouring themselves out about what this piece of music means to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927605\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927605\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"a young white man with light brown hair in a black button-down shirt and glasses looks down away from the camera\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/image0-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nicholas Britell’s other scores include collaborations with director Adam McKay, including ‘The Big Short’ and ‘Don’t Look Up,’ as well as the HBO show ‘Succession.’ \u003ccite>(Emma McIntyre)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell:\u003c/strong> I’ll just add that the music that I write with Barry is unlike anything else that I write. In some ways, I think Barry lets me tap into different emotions, and there are certain feelings that I think we are both drawn to. And I get to figure out: what is the sound of that? So much of what we do is experimentation — Barry will like a kernel of something, so we follow that, but we don’t know where we’re going. Just that when we’re there, we’ll know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em> were both so rooted in Miami and New York, respectively, the cities where they took place. But \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em> takes us to so many different locations, and then also has surreal elements. How do you find the sound for something of that scope, especially without the anchor of a specific, singular time or place?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell:\u003c/strong> The scale and scope and difficulty of \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em> was unlike anything I’d ever done. I remember Barry saying to me, you know, each state is a different state of mind for Cora — and we thought of it almost like different planets. Because that journey is unlike \u003cem>anything\u003c/em>. As a comparison, it’s not \u003cem>Succession,\u003c/em> where, from episode 1 to 2, we’re probably in New York City, probably in the Roy family. This is like we’re in a different \u003cem>universe\u003c/em>. We’re in a different dimension, possibly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the sonic experimentation, just the amount that we were going to push… we look at \u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em>, where there was the idea of using \u003ca href=\"https://ra.co/features/4040\">chopped and screwed\u003c/a> as a technique, or in \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em>, where we’re taking the sounds of love and harming them so they’re broken and they become a sound of injustice. On \u003cem>Underground Railroad\u003c/em>, it was times 100. How do we push things to feel beyond what we can even imagine?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, what is the architecture? Because if you establish a musical idea at the very beginning of a film, part of the beauty, hopefully, is that if it comes back later, you have a memory of having felt it — even just subconsciously. So multiplying that across 10 episodes, when do we echo back? I remember showing Barry some new ideas at one point, and he was like, ‘You know what? No new ideas. We’re done.’\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/-sUIo56q-Qw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/-sUIo56q-Qw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins: \u003c/strong>\u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em> was definitely less of a literal journey, but to me it was also a much more clear emotional one: every state is different, because Cora’s mental state has shifted in addition to the setting. What Nick said about planets — I love that because different planets have different atmospheres, and these soundscapes are like those atmospheres. Venus is not like Mars, you know, it’s got to be completely different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And we’re also responding to the world around us. [At one point during production] Nick and Caitlin, his wife, who’s a cellist, had moved out to L.A., and Nick, do you remember Caitlin took up this hobby of birdwatching?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell: \u003c/strong>She’s still doing it. She’s an avid birder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins:\u003c/strong> She had all these feeders around, so there were these hummingbirds always around the studio. And I was thinking the other day, Nick, about the track “Fireflies.” And there’s a harp that’s played really fast, and to me, that’s the hummingbird wings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927602\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927602\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"a crowd of people sits watching classical musicians perform in a dark club-like space with large artworks projected onto the walls and ceiling\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/DSC09282-grittani-creative-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘SoundBox: Modern Sanctuary,’ conducted by Edwin Outwater in February 2020. \u003ccite>(Mike Grittani/Grittani Creative)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you want people to know going into these SoundBox shows?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicholas Britell:\u003c/strong> These performances are something Barry and I have never really done. While we’ve played \u003cem>Moonlight\u003c/em> live to picture before with orchestras, we have never actually performed in the authentic forms of the film with the original orchestrations. This is something we’ve been talking about since these were first written — like, how could we do this? \u003cem>Can\u003c/em> we do this? Because, for example, \u003cem>Beale Street\u003c/em> is as much an orchestration exercise, with these different instrument colors, as it is about these very special reverbs at times, where you hear the sounds sort of floating and soaring and swirling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barry Jenkins: \u003c/strong>We have heard stories about the reverb quality of SoundBox and we are hoping to put it through its paces. We’ve heard it’s legit. And the cats that work there are out to prove to us that it’s legit, so we’re pushing the boundaries with this concert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ll also say — I moved to the Bay at a time in my life when I was incredibly down on myself, and I went through some ups and downs there. And I’d walk past the Symphony all the time, and I just never thought … There are going to be images of Black folks projected all throughout this show. These folks are going to be playing music that I think organically reflects the experience of Black people. And I just never, never thought there was a world in which that would ever happen. It’s gonna be very cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>‘SoundBox: In Conversation With Nicholas Britell and Barry Jenkins’ takes place at 9 p.m. on Friday, April 14 and Saturday, April 15 at the San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox (300 Franklin St., San Francisco). Tickets start at $99; \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2022-23/SBX-NicholasBritell\">details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "‘Succession’ Returns for a Fourth and Final Season of Family Back-Stabbing",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>began on Logan Roy’s birthday, with his first medical emergency. It had him nearly dying in his own helicopter, and it raised the question of what might come after Logan. Who would take over Waystar Royco? Who would run things? What would Logan have wanted? Since then, we’ve learned that this was an utter misdirect: \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> is not about following Logan Roy at all. It is about \u003cem>surviving \u003c/em>Logan Roy. Can he be endured? Can his caustic influence be undone? Can he ever be outwitted, outplayed, or outlasted?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite dialogue so acerbic that it puckers the cast’s mouths like a salt and vinegar chip, and despite the dynamism of performances that harden, soften and harden again, stasis has always stalked the story of the Roys. Kendall, after all, has been vanquished in four separate rebellions against his father, each time ramming his quavering, sad-boy face into a different immovable object.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13926515']At the board meeting in Season 1, it was weather and midtown traffic. At Shiv and Tom’s wedding, it was the dual grip of his own addiction and his cowardice in the face of consequences. After the press conference\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/14/770025859/roy-oh-roy-that-succession-finale-was-a-trip\"> at the end of Season 2,\u003c/a> it was systemic indifference to the wrongdoing of the billionaire class. And at the end of Season 3, when his siblings finally joined him, it was Logan’s legend itself. Tom had seen Kendall lose to his father before, believed he would lose again, and wound up bringing about that result in an effort to end up on the winning team (and spite his wife). Kendall had thought that an orderly approach could work, that the brutal truth could work, or that a united front could work. They didn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> can look like it’s stuck in a loop, but the way this conflict between Logan and his three youngest kids changes in shape but never in result served to establish the show’s central truth: Logan always wins. If that’s the case, though, there’s a story problem with one final season to go. If the kids do finally beat him, you’ve cheated on that truth. If they stop trying to beat him, the conflict is over. If they fail again, the family has just made one last round through the same cycle. And the last thing \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>could ever end in is any sort of compromise. So what’s a storyteller to do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critically, though, at\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/12/1063561827/succession-recap-season-3-finale\"> the end of the third season,\u003c/a> something else changed in a way it never had. It wasn’t the dynamic between Shiv, Roman and Kendall and their father one-on-one, but the dynamics \u003cem>among\u003c/em> the three of them. Logan, even in winning again, had become so galled at their effort to defy him that he took his eye off the ball. He gave up his greatest advantage, the one he’d been using to control them all their lives: playing them against each other. He told them \u003cem>all \u003c/em>that they were fools. He had spent decades trapping them in separate emotional cells and giving them different information and different promises. Now, he had effectively shut them in a room together and walked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wisely, the fourth season begins a while later, rather than dwelling on the immediate aftermath, which seems to have played out as one would expect. Family relationships? Busted. Shiv’s marriage? A wreck. The sale to GoJo? About to close. What’s more, it’s Logan’s birthday again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3D3ewle7XY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We find Roman, Shiv and Kendall hanging out at a compound somewhere beautiful, looking at mountains and blue sky through enormous windows that emphasize their opened-up world — particularly compared to the dark-wood family home, where Logan is celebrating another trip around the sun with his usual joyless scowl. The siblings are working on a terrible but brutally plausible idea for a new company, and their fixation is mostly on making fun of proposed logos. They are eyeing each other suspiciously now and then, wondering whether anyone is going to break with the group, but they are together, truly, more than we’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, only two members of the family remain in Logan’s circle: Tom, who proved his loyalty to his father-in-law by shivving Shiv, and Greg, who was won over by Tom’s appeal to the utter irrelevance of the human soul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13906871']So while his kids are still trying to survive Logan Roy, they are oddly, suddenly, liberated from him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe. Sort of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first episode of this final season (of the four offered to critics) asks a new question, and hints at the way this story problem will be solved and stasis avoided: Without their father setting them against each other in the way he always has, and without the dynamic they have all known since birth that has prevented them — Shiv, Kendall, Roman and Connor — from developing durable and meaningful relationships with anyone as adults, who \u003cem>are\u003c/em> these people? What will drive them, if not that competitiveness for his approval? And without them as his playthings, will Logan somehow manage to … miss them? Can torturing Greg and being exasperated by Tom ever give Logan anything close to the visceral pleasure he gets from emotionally abusing his children?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first episode also introduces an important choice that comes back over and over in the first few episodes: the comedy and the tension that’s inherent in the unseen. There is a discussion between Logan and Greg that sounds \u003cem>so\u003c/em> funny, the kind of exchange that the writers would dig into and that the actors could devour like a Christmas ham — but we don’t see it, we only hear Greg describe it. There is a series of telephone conversations where we seem to be watching the wrong side, the less important side — the listening side rather than the speaking side. Information arrives first via a telling flicker in the eye of a person who’s receiving it, who only later makes explicit what was said. \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> has always been a sharply written show, but there is a delicious restraint in this season that feels new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To do less, to say less, and to leave out scenes that could have been dramatic or comedic or both, requires confidence in both the writers and the cast. Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin and Alan Ruck have in common a talent for summoning both childlike, love-me expressions and loathsome, snide, ice-cold ones. They can sneer and snivel with only seconds separating the two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13925147']And doing without much in the way of contact between Logan and his children in the early going requires him to be surrounded by people who give his character shape. There’s Tom, and there’s Greg, but critically, this season also sees new opportunities for Logan’s cadre of suit-wearing opportunists played by the genius supporting cast. Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) (whose relationship with Roman seems to be far less complex to her than it is to him) has managed to stick around even after the Photo That Shall Not Be Named, and she remains a ruthlessly efficient cipher. Karl (David Rasche) and Frank (Peter Friedman) continue to be the dry-witted Weasel-Dee and Weasel-Dum of corporate goobers, and poor Hugo (Fisher Stevens) and Karolina (Dagmara Dominczyk) are over and over forced into the position of translating this family’s disasters for the entire world. They are uniformly divine when called upon in new ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a season the creators are holding close to the vest for obvious reasons. But in the early going, it’s off to exactly the emotionally complicated, darkly funny, backstabbing, bantering, betraying, bewitching, tragicomic punch-packing start that the people who have followed the Roys since Kendall first sang along in the back seat of a limo are craving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Succession%27+returns+for+a+fourth+and+final+season+of+family+back-stabbing&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Season 4 of ‘Succession’ premieres on HBO Max on March 26, 2023. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>began on Logan Roy’s birthday, with his first medical emergency. It had him nearly dying in his own helicopter, and it raised the question of what might come after Logan. Who would take over Waystar Royco? Who would run things? What would Logan have wanted? Since then, we’ve learned that this was an utter misdirect: \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> is not about following Logan Roy at all. It is about \u003cem>surviving \u003c/em>Logan Roy. Can he be endured? Can his caustic influence be undone? Can he ever be outwitted, outplayed, or outlasted?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite dialogue so acerbic that it puckers the cast’s mouths like a salt and vinegar chip, and despite the dynamism of performances that harden, soften and harden again, stasis has always stalked the story of the Roys. Kendall, after all, has been vanquished in four separate rebellions against his father, each time ramming his quavering, sad-boy face into a different immovable object.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At the board meeting in Season 1, it was weather and midtown traffic. At Shiv and Tom’s wedding, it was the dual grip of his own addiction and his cowardice in the face of consequences. After the press conference\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/14/770025859/roy-oh-roy-that-succession-finale-was-a-trip\"> at the end of Season 2,\u003c/a> it was systemic indifference to the wrongdoing of the billionaire class. And at the end of Season 3, when his siblings finally joined him, it was Logan’s legend itself. Tom had seen Kendall lose to his father before, believed he would lose again, and wound up bringing about that result in an effort to end up on the winning team (and spite his wife). Kendall had thought that an orderly approach could work, that the brutal truth could work, or that a united front could work. They didn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> can look like it’s stuck in a loop, but the way this conflict between Logan and his three youngest kids changes in shape but never in result served to establish the show’s central truth: Logan always wins. If that’s the case, though, there’s a story problem with one final season to go. If the kids do finally beat him, you’ve cheated on that truth. If they stop trying to beat him, the conflict is over. If they fail again, the family has just made one last round through the same cycle. And the last thing \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>could ever end in is any sort of compromise. So what’s a storyteller to do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critically, though, at\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/12/1063561827/succession-recap-season-3-finale\"> the end of the third season,\u003c/a> something else changed in a way it never had. It wasn’t the dynamic between Shiv, Roman and Kendall and their father one-on-one, but the dynamics \u003cem>among\u003c/em> the three of them. Logan, even in winning again, had become so galled at their effort to defy him that he took his eye off the ball. He gave up his greatest advantage, the one he’d been using to control them all their lives: playing them against each other. He told them \u003cem>all \u003c/em>that they were fools. He had spent decades trapping them in separate emotional cells and giving them different information and different promises. Now, he had effectively shut them in a room together and walked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wisely, the fourth season begins a while later, rather than dwelling on the immediate aftermath, which seems to have played out as one would expect. Family relationships? Busted. Shiv’s marriage? A wreck. The sale to GoJo? About to close. What’s more, it’s Logan’s birthday again.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/t3D3ewle7XY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/t3D3ewle7XY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We find Roman, Shiv and Kendall hanging out at a compound somewhere beautiful, looking at mountains and blue sky through enormous windows that emphasize their opened-up world — particularly compared to the dark-wood family home, where Logan is celebrating another trip around the sun with his usual joyless scowl. The siblings are working on a terrible but brutally plausible idea for a new company, and their fixation is mostly on making fun of proposed logos. They are eyeing each other suspiciously now and then, wondering whether anyone is going to break with the group, but they are together, truly, more than we’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, only two members of the family remain in Logan’s circle: Tom, who proved his loyalty to his father-in-law by shivving Shiv, and Greg, who was won over by Tom’s appeal to the utter irrelevance of the human soul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>So while his kids are still trying to survive Logan Roy, they are oddly, suddenly, liberated from him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe. Sort of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first episode of this final season (of the four offered to critics) asks a new question, and hints at the way this story problem will be solved and stasis avoided: Without their father setting them against each other in the way he always has, and without the dynamic they have all known since birth that has prevented them — Shiv, Kendall, Roman and Connor — from developing durable and meaningful relationships with anyone as adults, who \u003cem>are\u003c/em> these people? What will drive them, if not that competitiveness for his approval? And without them as his playthings, will Logan somehow manage to … miss them? Can torturing Greg and being exasperated by Tom ever give Logan anything close to the visceral pleasure he gets from emotionally abusing his children?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first episode also introduces an important choice that comes back over and over in the first few episodes: the comedy and the tension that’s inherent in the unseen. There is a discussion between Logan and Greg that sounds \u003cem>so\u003c/em> funny, the kind of exchange that the writers would dig into and that the actors could devour like a Christmas ham — but we don’t see it, we only hear Greg describe it. There is a series of telephone conversations where we seem to be watching the wrong side, the less important side — the listening side rather than the speaking side. Information arrives first via a telling flicker in the eye of a person who’s receiving it, who only later makes explicit what was said. \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> has always been a sharply written show, but there is a delicious restraint in this season that feels new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To do less, to say less, and to leave out scenes that could have been dramatic or comedic or both, requires confidence in both the writers and the cast. Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin and Alan Ruck have in common a talent for summoning both childlike, love-me expressions and loathsome, snide, ice-cold ones. They can sneer and snivel with only seconds separating the two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And doing without much in the way of contact between Logan and his children in the early going requires him to be surrounded by people who give his character shape. There’s Tom, and there’s Greg, but critically, this season also sees new opportunities for Logan’s cadre of suit-wearing opportunists played by the genius supporting cast. Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) (whose relationship with Roman seems to be far less complex to her than it is to him) has managed to stick around even after the Photo That Shall Not Be Named, and she remains a ruthlessly efficient cipher. Karl (David Rasche) and Frank (Peter Friedman) continue to be the dry-witted Weasel-Dee and Weasel-Dum of corporate goobers, and poor Hugo (Fisher Stevens) and Karolina (Dagmara Dominczyk) are over and over forced into the position of translating this family’s disasters for the entire world. They are uniformly divine when called upon in new ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a season the creators are holding close to the vest for obvious reasons. But in the early going, it’s off to exactly the emotionally complicated, darkly funny, backstabbing, bantering, betraying, bewitching, tragicomic punch-packing start that the people who have followed the Roys since Kendall first sang along in the back seat of a limo are craving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Succession%27+returns+for+a+fourth+and+final+season+of+family+back-stabbing&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Season 4 of ‘Succession’ premieres on HBO Max on March 26, 2023. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Five Takeaways From the 2022 Emmy Awards",
"headTitle": "Five Takeaways From the 2022 Emmy Awards | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Emmy night was a big one for a lot of different shows: \u003cem>Squid Game\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Ted Lasso\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The White Lotus\u003c/em>. There were very strange music choices (why did Jesse Armstrong collect an Emmy for writing \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>and walk on stage to “Shake Your Booty”?) and bits that dragged on too long (especially Jimmy Kimmel’s play-dead routine that lasted right through Quinta Brunson’s win for comedy writing for \u003cem>Abbott Elementary\u003c/em>). But there were also great speeches and encouraging wins, and we’re here to look at five takeaways from the ceremony as a whole. (Here’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/09/12/1122305852/emmys-2022-full-list-of-nominees\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a complete list of winners\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. The great Sheryl Lee Ralph won the night.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are years when you have to try to figure out what was the best moment of the ceremony; this was not one of those years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Sheryl Lee Ralph accepted the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for \u003cem>Abbott Elementary\u003c/em>, her speech was not only the best moment of the night, but it’s up there for the best moment of the Emmys… maybe ever?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRw8IFLS1Fs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ralph took the stage and sang Dianne Reeves’ “Endangered Species” a cappella—something few people could do effectively. She then spoke rousingly, beautifully and encouragingly about the importance of never giving up your dreams and how you should value all the people who take care of you. It’s worth downloading the whole speech to your phone so that you can play it for yourself the next time you are discouraged, but really, it belongs uniquely to her and the power of her talent and her history. Her career in TV stretches back to the 1980s, but with this award she became only the second Black woman to win in the category (after Jackée Harry for \u003cem>227\u003c/em>). While it was overdue, it was great to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. The show still needs more time for speeches and less for montages and scripted banter.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This particular Emmy ceremony, with a couple of notable exceptions, seemed to be playing people off quickly, even though some of them, like Jennifer Coolidge, were very entertaining. Coolidge won best supporting actress in a limited series for her work in \u003cem>The White Lotus;\u003c/em> after trying and trying to get the show to let her say a couple more things, Coolidge heard “Hit The Road, Jack” start up and, rather than hurrying off stage, she danced, to a roar from the crowd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-9yNVGiOpE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time winners fought for spare seconds, dull montages that were little more than “here are some TV shows” were allowed to linger, as were scripted bits that seemed less satisfying than the cut-off speeches, even when those sketches were performed by able comedians like host Kenan Thompson and the very funny Bowen Yang. Awards show producers seem convinced that people want all the stuff in between the awards more than they want the awards; betting on the charm of a speech instead of another montage will rarely be the wrong decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. There weren’t a lot of big surprises. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Ted Lasso \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>were both expected to win their respective categories of comedy series and drama series… and they did. \u003cem>The White Lotus \u003c/em>cleaned up in the limited series awards with wins for Coolidge and Murray Bartlett in the supporting categories and for Mike White in directing and writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet none of those shows swept the awards. Amanda Seyfried took lead actress for \u003cem>The Dropout \u003c/em>and Michael Keaton won for lead actor in \u003cem>Dopesick\u003c/em>. Lee Jung-jae won lead actor in a drama series for \u003cem>Squid Game, \u003c/em>the first Asian man to ever be so honored. This might be a surprise, since it’s the first time someone has won for a performance where they didn’t speak English, but the sheer phenomenon of the show and its big haul of nominations had suggested it had a good shot at doing well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the nicest surprise was Lizzo’s \u003cem>Watch Out For The Big Grrrls, \u003c/em>which broke \u003cem>RuPaul’s Drag Race\u003c/em> streak of four wins in the reality competition category. That win led (of course) to a powerful and joyful speech from Lizzo about the importance of representation—a running theme over the course of the evening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdWc-MW4HCM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. There’s still plenty of repetition. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even with competition running hot in almost every category and a lack of shows dominating the awards the way sitcoms like \u003cem>Frasier \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Modern Family \u003c/em>once did, there were lots of repeat winners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13918217']\u003cem>Saturday Night Live \u003c/em>won again in the variety sketch category (its only rival was \u003cem>A Black Lady Sketch Show\u003c/em>); it was its sixth win in a row, a pretty boring outcome. \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>repeated last year’s win in the outstanding drama series category, as did \u003cem>Ted Lasso \u003c/em>in its own category of outstanding comedy series. Plus, \u003cem>Ted Lasso\u003c/em> actors Jason Sudeikis and Brett Goldstein won again in the lead and supporting categories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That wasn’t all. Zendaya, who won the award for outstanding lead actress in a drama series for \u003cem>Euphoria \u003c/em>two years ago, won again. Jean Smart won for \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>for lead actress in a comedy series for the second year in a row. Perhaps most impressive of all, \u003cem>Last Week Tonight with John Oliver \u003c/em>won its seventh straight award for outstanding variety talk series, continuing to beat \u003cem>The Daily Show \u003c/em>as well as all of network late night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. People want to see new winners have a real chance. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s more an observation of public reaction than of the show itself, but standards seem to have changed for when a show has won “too much.” Back in the days when there were far fewer shows to choose from, it wasn’t until something racked up five or six wins—that pressure started to mount to get something else, anything else, up on stage with a win.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, with so much out there and so much that’s good, even two wins for \u003cem>Ted Lasso \u003c/em>seems repetitive, particularly when there’s a show that feels as fresh as \u003cem>Abbott Elementary\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13917950']The Emmys are starting to have an enviable problem: Even when people disagree with the outcome of a contest, it might be less that a show is undeserving and more that there’s simply something else that deserves a shot in a stacked category. Even the great Jean Smart, beloved by so many over such a tremendous career and absolutely marvelous on \u003cem>Hacks\u003c/em>, might not have been the first choice of many people. That’s not because of her ability; it’s because this was a year where she faced opponents like Brunson, who is a new face, and Issa Rae, who’s been nominated for \u003cem>Insecure \u003c/em>several times but has never won. This is one of the reasons the \u003cem>Squid Game \u003c/em>wins feels invigorating—the show is new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s one thing for a win to feel deserved; it’s another for it to feel exciting. Even a second or third win can seem rote by now, so bring on the new contenders, and we’ll be glad to see them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Five+takeaways+from+the+2022+Emmy+awards&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Emmy night was a big one for a lot of different shows: \u003cem>Squid Game\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Ted Lasso\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The White Lotus\u003c/em>. There were very strange music choices (why did Jesse Armstrong collect an Emmy for writing \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>and walk on stage to “Shake Your Booty”?) and bits that dragged on too long (especially Jimmy Kimmel’s play-dead routine that lasted right through Quinta Brunson’s win for comedy writing for \u003cem>Abbott Elementary\u003c/em>). But there were also great speeches and encouraging wins, and we’re here to look at five takeaways from the ceremony as a whole. (Here’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/09/12/1122305852/emmys-2022-full-list-of-nominees\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a complete list of winners\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. The great Sheryl Lee Ralph won the night.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are years when you have to try to figure out what was the best moment of the ceremony; this was not one of those years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Sheryl Lee Ralph accepted the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for \u003cem>Abbott Elementary\u003c/em>, her speech was not only the best moment of the night, but it’s up there for the best moment of the Emmys… maybe ever?\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/cRw8IFLS1Fs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/cRw8IFLS1Fs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ralph took the stage and sang Dianne Reeves’ “Endangered Species” a cappella—something few people could do effectively. She then spoke rousingly, beautifully and encouragingly about the importance of never giving up your dreams and how you should value all the people who take care of you. It’s worth downloading the whole speech to your phone so that you can play it for yourself the next time you are discouraged, but really, it belongs uniquely to her and the power of her talent and her history. Her career in TV stretches back to the 1980s, but with this award she became only the second Black woman to win in the category (after Jackée Harry for \u003cem>227\u003c/em>). While it was overdue, it was great to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. The show still needs more time for speeches and less for montages and scripted banter.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This particular Emmy ceremony, with a couple of notable exceptions, seemed to be playing people off quickly, even though some of them, like Jennifer Coolidge, were very entertaining. Coolidge won best supporting actress in a limited series for her work in \u003cem>The White Lotus;\u003c/em> after trying and trying to get the show to let her say a couple more things, Coolidge heard “Hit The Road, Jack” start up and, rather than hurrying off stage, she danced, to a roar from the crowd.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/y-9yNVGiOpE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/y-9yNVGiOpE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>At the same time winners fought for spare seconds, dull montages that were little more than “here are some TV shows” were allowed to linger, as were scripted bits that seemed less satisfying than the cut-off speeches, even when those sketches were performed by able comedians like host Kenan Thompson and the very funny Bowen Yang. Awards show producers seem convinced that people want all the stuff in between the awards more than they want the awards; betting on the charm of a speech instead of another montage will rarely be the wrong decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. There weren’t a lot of big surprises. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Ted Lasso \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>were both expected to win their respective categories of comedy series and drama series… and they did. \u003cem>The White Lotus \u003c/em>cleaned up in the limited series awards with wins for Coolidge and Murray Bartlett in the supporting categories and for Mike White in directing and writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet none of those shows swept the awards. Amanda Seyfried took lead actress for \u003cem>The Dropout \u003c/em>and Michael Keaton won for lead actor in \u003cem>Dopesick\u003c/em>. Lee Jung-jae won lead actor in a drama series for \u003cem>Squid Game, \u003c/em>the first Asian man to ever be so honored. This might be a surprise, since it’s the first time someone has won for a performance where they didn’t speak English, but the sheer phenomenon of the show and its big haul of nominations had suggested it had a good shot at doing well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the nicest surprise was Lizzo’s \u003cem>Watch Out For The Big Grrrls, \u003c/em>which broke \u003cem>RuPaul’s Drag Race\u003c/em> streak of four wins in the reality competition category. That win led (of course) to a powerful and joyful speech from Lizzo about the importance of representation—a running theme over the course of the evening.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/zdWc-MW4HCM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/zdWc-MW4HCM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. There’s still plenty of repetition. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even with competition running hot in almost every category and a lack of shows dominating the awards the way sitcoms like \u003cem>Frasier \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Modern Family \u003c/em>once did, there were lots of repeat winners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>Saturday Night Live \u003c/em>won again in the variety sketch category (its only rival was \u003cem>A Black Lady Sketch Show\u003c/em>); it was its sixth win in a row, a pretty boring outcome. \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>repeated last year’s win in the outstanding drama series category, as did \u003cem>Ted Lasso \u003c/em>in its own category of outstanding comedy series. Plus, \u003cem>Ted Lasso\u003c/em> actors Jason Sudeikis and Brett Goldstein won again in the lead and supporting categories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That wasn’t all. Zendaya, who won the award for outstanding lead actress in a drama series for \u003cem>Euphoria \u003c/em>two years ago, won again. Jean Smart won for \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>for lead actress in a comedy series for the second year in a row. Perhaps most impressive of all, \u003cem>Last Week Tonight with John Oliver \u003c/em>won its seventh straight award for outstanding variety talk series, continuing to beat \u003cem>The Daily Show \u003c/em>as well as all of network late night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. People want to see new winners have a real chance. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s more an observation of public reaction than of the show itself, but standards seem to have changed for when a show has won “too much.” Back in the days when there were far fewer shows to choose from, it wasn’t until something racked up five or six wins—that pressure started to mount to get something else, anything else, up on stage with a win.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, with so much out there and so much that’s good, even two wins for \u003cem>Ted Lasso \u003c/em>seems repetitive, particularly when there’s a show that feels as fresh as \u003cem>Abbott Elementary\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Emmys are starting to have an enviable problem: Even when people disagree with the outcome of a contest, it might be less that a show is undeserving and more that there’s simply something else that deserves a shot in a stacked category. Even the great Jean Smart, beloved by so many over such a tremendous career and absolutely marvelous on \u003cem>Hacks\u003c/em>, might not have been the first choice of many people. That’s not because of her ability; it’s because this was a year where she faced opponents like Brunson, who is a new face, and Issa Rae, who’s been nominated for \u003cem>Insecure \u003c/em>several times but has never won. This is one of the reasons the \u003cem>Squid Game \u003c/em>wins feels invigorating—the show is new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s one thing for a win to feel deserved; it’s another for it to feel exciting. Even a second or third win can seem rote by now, so bring on the new contenders, and we’ll be glad to see them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Five+takeaways+from+the+2022+Emmy+awards&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Five Big Takeaways From the SAG Awards—and What They Might Mean for the Oscars",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Screen Actors Guild Awards happened on Sunday night—the first of the guilds to give out their big prizes this season. The guilds—your Screen Actors Guild, but also your Directors Guild and your Producers Guild and your Writers Guild—make particularly interesting predictors of Oscar season (unlike, for instance, the Golden Globes), because they are chosen by some of the same voters. That can make guild awards solid predictors, or at least as solid as any. For instance, before \u003cem>Parasite \u003c/em>won what was originally considered a longshot best picture Oscar two years ago, it picked up a win at the SAG Awards, and that’s when its win for best picture started to look like a shot that was not quite so long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So what can we take away from\u003ca href=\"https://www.sagawards.org/awards/nominees-and-recipients/28th-annual-screen-actors-guild-awards\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Sunday night’s wins\u003c/a>?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13909100']1. \u003cstrong>Here comes \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Squid Game\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong> The South Korean drama series about a game that offers participants the chance to get out of debt or literally die trying won big in television drama: Lee Jung-jae and Jung Ho-yeon won for lead actor and actress, and the show’s stunt ensemble won in their category as well. (The SAG Awards are one of the only places where stunt performers are honored, a regrettable omission elsewhere that was noted by my colleague Glen Weldon in a recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/02/27/1082867039/we-love-the-oscars-but-we-need-to-talk-about-those-awards-ceremony-changes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">lament about the Oscars\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Emmys come around in the fall, will \u003cem>Squid Game \u003c/em>manage to beat out the lauded \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, the cast of which won last night’s ensemble award? It’s always hard to know when popularity—hotness, if you will—is going to translate into awards recognition. Early signs for \u003cem>Squid Game \u003c/em>(and thus Netflix) are good, but \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>is still a beast, and it had a very good third season. Should be a good fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>2. \u003cem>\u003cstrong>CODA \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>is getting some good momentum. \u003c/strong>\u003cem>CODA\u003c/em>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/08/13/1027033602/coda-will-yank-shamelessly-on-your-heartstrings-but-its-very-good-at-it\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">crowd-pleaser\u003c/a> about a young girl named Ruby getting ready to leave for college (or not), won the award for its ensemble—the closest thing the SAG Awards have to best picture. And Troy Kotsur, who plays Ruby’s father, won the supporting actor award. Note that Kotsur was the first deaf actor to win a solo SAG award, and the cast was the first predominantly deaf cast to win.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13901279']The film has been on a bit of a roller-coaster: When it came out at Sundance, it was lauded and sold for a ton of money; hopes were high. But maybe because it sold to Apple TV, still a service that doesn’t have the reach of something like Netflix, and maybe because its theatrical release came in August, when theatrical attendance was still pretty rickety, it seemed to fade a little in the public consciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until recently, it felt to me—this, admittedly, is my extremely unscientific gut instinct—that best picture would probably go to either \u003cem>Power of the Dog \u003c/em>or \u003cem>Don’t Look Up\u003c/em>, but it’s easy to wonder whether \u003cem>CODA \u003c/em>might sneak in there. A crowd-pleaser does, after all, sometimes please just enough of the crowd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. Will Smith may be close.\u003c/strong> Will Smith has been nominated for Oscars twice before, for \u003cem>The Pursuit of Happyness \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Ali\u003c/em>. Some of his other performances have felt, for lack of a better word, awards-y, but have not been nominated: your \u003cem>Concussion\u003c/em>, your \u003cem>Seven Pounds\u003c/em>, and so forth. This year, he’s nominated for \u003cem>King Richard. \u003c/em>He’s already won the Golden Globe—but as we’ve discussed in the past, that doesn’t tell you much. Now, however, he’s won the SAG Award, which advances the notion that we may be looking at the Will Smith Oscar year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13906308']\u003cstrong>4. Your movie doesn’t have to be a big knockout for you to win.\u003c/strong> Full disclosure: \u003cem>The Eyes of Tammy Faye \u003c/em>is still on my Oscar spreadsheet as “To Watch,” not as “Watched.” But that film was nominated for just two Oscars: Jessica Chastain for best actress and the film’s makeup and hairstyling. It’s not a huge haul, and the reviews were what we might call good-not-great. Nevertheless, Chastain won the SAG on Sunday, and like Will Smith, she’s on her third Oscar nomination. But if she beats out, on Oscar night, Nicole Kidman, Olivia Colman, Kristen Stewart and Penélope Cruz? That’s a big win for a movie that has not necessarily been prominent this season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. It’s an Ariana DeBose world.\u003c/strong> Ariana DeBose won for \u003cem>West Side Story \u003c/em>on Sunday, continuing—as a couple of folks noted—\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/joereid/status/1498106770119663620?cxt=HHwWiIC5yfGKrMopAAAA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a talent pipeline\u003c/a> from Fox’s reality show \u003cem>So You Think You Can Dance\u003c/em>. But more directly, DeBose is just on a huge roll, and while there aren’t a lot of “rising star” stories anymore where \u003cem>everybody \u003c/em>seems to think the person is just luminous and fabulous, she’s got what feels like an extremely high approval rating at this point. \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2022/awards/news/ariana-debose-sag-winner-latina-1235186004/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">She’s also the first Latina actress and the first openly queer woman of color to win\u003c/a> for film. If you’re looking for a good story this Oscar season, look no further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Five+big+takeaways+from+the+SAG+Awards+%E2%80%94+and+what+they+might+mean+for+the+Oscars&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Screen Actors Guild Awards happened on Sunday night—the first of the guilds to give out their big prizes this season. The guilds—your Screen Actors Guild, but also your Directors Guild and your Producers Guild and your Writers Guild—make particularly interesting predictors of Oscar season (unlike, for instance, the Golden Globes), because they are chosen by some of the same voters. That can make guild awards solid predictors, or at least as solid as any. For instance, before \u003cem>Parasite \u003c/em>won what was originally considered a longshot best picture Oscar two years ago, it picked up a win at the SAG Awards, and that’s when its win for best picture started to look like a shot that was not quite so long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So what can we take away from\u003ca href=\"https://www.sagawards.org/awards/nominees-and-recipients/28th-annual-screen-actors-guild-awards\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Sunday night’s wins\u003c/a>?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>1. \u003cstrong>Here comes \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Squid Game\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong> The South Korean drama series about a game that offers participants the chance to get out of debt or literally die trying won big in television drama: Lee Jung-jae and Jung Ho-yeon won for lead actor and actress, and the show’s stunt ensemble won in their category as well. (The SAG Awards are one of the only places where stunt performers are honored, a regrettable omission elsewhere that was noted by my colleague Glen Weldon in a recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/02/27/1082867039/we-love-the-oscars-but-we-need-to-talk-about-those-awards-ceremony-changes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">lament about the Oscars\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Emmys come around in the fall, will \u003cem>Squid Game \u003c/em>manage to beat out the lauded \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, the cast of which won last night’s ensemble award? It’s always hard to know when popularity—hotness, if you will—is going to translate into awards recognition. Early signs for \u003cem>Squid Game \u003c/em>(and thus Netflix) are good, but \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>is still a beast, and it had a very good third season. Should be a good fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>2. \u003cem>\u003cstrong>CODA \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>is getting some good momentum. \u003c/strong>\u003cem>CODA\u003c/em>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/08/13/1027033602/coda-will-yank-shamelessly-on-your-heartstrings-but-its-very-good-at-it\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">crowd-pleaser\u003c/a> about a young girl named Ruby getting ready to leave for college (or not), won the award for its ensemble—the closest thing the SAG Awards have to best picture. And Troy Kotsur, who plays Ruby’s father, won the supporting actor award. Note that Kotsur was the first deaf actor to win a solo SAG award, and the cast was the first predominantly deaf cast to win.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The film has been on a bit of a roller-coaster: When it came out at Sundance, it was lauded and sold for a ton of money; hopes were high. But maybe because it sold to Apple TV, still a service that doesn’t have the reach of something like Netflix, and maybe because its theatrical release came in August, when theatrical attendance was still pretty rickety, it seemed to fade a little in the public consciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until recently, it felt to me—this, admittedly, is my extremely unscientific gut instinct—that best picture would probably go to either \u003cem>Power of the Dog \u003c/em>or \u003cem>Don’t Look Up\u003c/em>, but it’s easy to wonder whether \u003cem>CODA \u003c/em>might sneak in there. A crowd-pleaser does, after all, sometimes please just enough of the crowd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. Will Smith may be close.\u003c/strong> Will Smith has been nominated for Oscars twice before, for \u003cem>The Pursuit of Happyness \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Ali\u003c/em>. Some of his other performances have felt, for lack of a better word, awards-y, but have not been nominated: your \u003cem>Concussion\u003c/em>, your \u003cem>Seven Pounds\u003c/em>, and so forth. This year, he’s nominated for \u003cem>King Richard. \u003c/em>He’s already won the Golden Globe—but as we’ve discussed in the past, that doesn’t tell you much. Now, however, he’s won the SAG Award, which advances the notion that we may be looking at the Will Smith Oscar year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. Your movie doesn’t have to be a big knockout for you to win.\u003c/strong> Full disclosure: \u003cem>The Eyes of Tammy Faye \u003c/em>is still on my Oscar spreadsheet as “To Watch,” not as “Watched.” But that film was nominated for just two Oscars: Jessica Chastain for best actress and the film’s makeup and hairstyling. It’s not a huge haul, and the reviews were what we might call good-not-great. Nevertheless, Chastain won the SAG on Sunday, and like Will Smith, she’s on her third Oscar nomination. But if she beats out, on Oscar night, Nicole Kidman, Olivia Colman, Kristen Stewart and Penélope Cruz? That’s a big win for a movie that has not necessarily been prominent this season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. It’s an Ariana DeBose world.\u003c/strong> Ariana DeBose won for \u003cem>West Side Story \u003c/em>on Sunday, continuing—as a couple of folks noted—\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/joereid/status/1498106770119663620?cxt=HHwWiIC5yfGKrMopAAAA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a talent pipeline\u003c/a> from Fox’s reality show \u003cem>So You Think You Can Dance\u003c/em>. But more directly, DeBose is just on a huge roll, and while there aren’t a lot of “rising star” stories anymore where \u003cem>everybody \u003c/em>seems to think the person is just luminous and fabulous, she’s got what feels like an extremely high approval rating at this point. \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2022/awards/news/ariana-debose-sag-winner-latina-1235186004/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">She’s also the first Latina actress and the first openly queer woman of color to win\u003c/a> for film. If you’re looking for a good story this Oscar season, look no further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Five+big+takeaways+from+the+SAG+Awards+%E2%80%94+and+what+they+might+mean+for+the+Oscars&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "On-Screen Peen: Equal-Opportunity Nudity or Dangling Distraction?",
"headTitle": "On-Screen Peen: Equal-Opportunity Nudity or Dangling Distraction? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>There is a point midway through Episode 2 of the new Hulu series \u003cem>Pam & Tommy\u003c/em> where Tommy Lee (played by Sebastian Stan) begins arguing with his own penis. The camera pans down to his crotch so the viewer can see close-up, an animatronic, flexing schlong with a talking tip. “We’ve gotta keep this pussy train rolling,” the peen (voiced by Jason Mantzoukas) demands. “Do you hear me?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13908915']This ridiculous display was the natural end point (pun intended) of months and months of TV shows trying to out-dick each other. As anyone with a regular streaming habit is no doubt aware, full-frontal male nudity is suddenly being embraced by the non-network channels like never before. HBO has, of course, been working to advance penile screen time since its earliest days. But in recent years, the channel has noticeably upgraded its wang locomotive from steam engine to bullet train. And it has inspired other channels to follow suit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the head of the HBO pack is \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em>. The show has garnered praise for finally bringing equal opportunity nudity to the TV screen. But, boy oh boy, does it have a tendency to overdo it. You name a type of penis, it’s been on \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em>. Old penis, erect penis, locker room penis, toilet penis, drug-dealer-house penis, about-to-get-shot penis, prosthetic penis, real penis. All of the penis, basically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/enbycoraline/status/1485869994067955713\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While HBO offers full-frontal male nudity in damn near everything (“Thanks for Steve Zahn’s fake balls in \u003cem>The White Lotus\u003c/em>,” said nobody), nowhere has \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em>’s influence been more obvious than in \u003cem>And Just Like That…\u003c/em>, the \u003cem>Sex and the City \u003c/em>reboot. This was a show that almost certainly would have benefited from more nudity in its original iteration, but remained a dong-free zone for the entirety of its six-season run in the 2000s. And yet its 2022 version managed to squeeze two ding-a-lings into a single episode. Neither acted as anything other than a dangling distraction in an otherwise sexless landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of which begs the question: How many on-screen penises are too many on-screen penises?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twitter users have certainly reached a consensus with \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em>. Sunday after Sunday, it’s clear that a broad swath of the audience thinks the show’s penile limit has been met and exceeded. (Not surprising when there were, infamously, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a27965066/euphoria-hbo-30-penises-nudity-sex-drugs/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">30 dicks\u003c/a>” featured in the second episode of the first season.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/lebang_moloi/status/1493117707650281475\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/Aj_tbp/status/1490515833612906496\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/ruesdirtynose/status/1488001274297597957\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/joekeerious/status/1485433317021396995\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When TV centers and gratuitously lingers on male members, it can feel as jarring for the viewer as receiving unsolicited dick pics. And \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em> knows how “terrifying” and “horrifying” dick pics can be. “There are two different types of dick pic,” Rue explained in season one. “Solicited and unsolicited. Solicited makes up about one percent of all dick pics sent and received.” At this point, a lot of women are simply sick to death of looking at penises they didn’t expressly ask to see. Actual studies have been done on this topic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, \u003cem>The Journal of Sex Research\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2020.1779171\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">published a study\u003c/a> that concluded:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>In a U.S. sample of 2,045 women of all sexual identities and 298 gay/bisexual men, we found that among those who had ever received a ‘dick pic,’ nearly all (91%) had also received an unsolicited [one]. Women of all sexual identities predominantly experienced negative responses to these unsolicited nude images, with only a minority selecting any positive or neutral/ambivalent reactions.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The other risk of overdoing on-screen peen is the ammunition it gives to so-called men’s rights activists (and a whole mess of other humans) who use the objectification of men to further justify the objectification of women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909409\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13909409\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-800x722.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-800x722.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-1020x921.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-160x144.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-768x693.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM.png 1090w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘meninist’ meme about objectification.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then there are the campaigners who see this wave of TV penises and think, “Hey! How can we pressure women on our screens to get \u003cem>even more\u003c/em> naked?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/KatieLny/status/1490033474698453000\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is of course a place for naked male bodies on television. It’s absurd that they’ve been such a rarity until fairly recently. It’s also still true that female actors are naked far more than their male counterparts. (We only need look at the nudity stats in \u003cem>Game of Thrones\u003c/em>. There were only two full-frontal male scenes in its entire eight seasons. For women, the show reached that number in Episode 7 alone.) But there are thoughtful ways of showing audiences everyday nudity that doesn’t turn the whole thing into a gratuitous sideshow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Season 3 of \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, for example, there is \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_fV5w5d7IU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a scene\u003c/a> in which Roman tries to send a dick pic to Gerri but accidentally sends it to his father Logan instead. The mortification Roman feels is enhanced by the fact that the viewer sees the intimate photograph too. We, along with Logan, are seeing something we shouldn’t. And its impact is heightened because it’s something we’ve never seen in \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> before. Had the series been a parade of unnecessary penises up to that point, it wouldn’t have been the scream-at-the-TV moment it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13891785']Even a show like \u003cem>Sex/Life\u003c/em>, which doesn’t shy away from regular nudity, has figured out how to use it to advance the plot effectively. In the third episode, for example, Cooper follows his wife’s ex-boyfriend into the showers at the gym, only to be stunned by how generously endowed Brad is. The giant (prosthetic) penis featured in the episode wasn’t there for no reason: it was there as part of a storyline about insecurity in relationships. It was there as a traditional symbol of male virility. And it was there to highlight the physical pressures put on men over something they have no control over. Without seeing what Brad was working with, the viewer couldn’t fully comprehend Cooper’s inner turmoil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The frustrating thing with \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em> is that it \u003cem>almost\u003c/em> gets it right all the time. In Season 2’s third episode, we see a flashback to Cal’s high school days. In it, we find out he was in love with his best friend and wrestling teammate, Derek. The moments of nudity they share in the locker room—even exchanging the same bar of soap in the shower—speak to a familiarity and an intimacy that would be hard to convey otherwise. It explains how they reach the point of feeling comfortable enough to dance together and make out in a gay bar despite being submerged in a world of toxic masculinity. Had the nudity been left at that, it would have been a powerful presence in their love story. Instead, we were also subjected to other, irrelevant penises in the shower, and lingering shots of floating underwater penis while Cal and Derek are skinny dipping. These moments undercut the power of their nude locker room bonding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of which is to say that full-frontal male nudity certainly has a valuable place on TV. Not just for the sake of realism in intimate scenes, but also in the service of specific, emotional plot points. But—like a flasher on a train—just because you \u003cem>can\u003c/em> show penis, doesn’t necessarily mean you \u003cem>should\u003c/em> show penis. In the rush to embrace equal opportunity nudity, some TV series have diminished their own value because of an inability to recognize that basic principle.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of which begs the question: How many on-screen penises are too many on-screen penises?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twitter users have certainly reached a consensus with \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em>. Sunday after Sunday, it’s clear that a broad swath of the audience thinks the show’s penile limit has been met and exceeded. (Not surprising when there were, infamously, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a27965066/euphoria-hbo-30-penises-nudity-sex-drugs/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">30 dicks\u003c/a>” featured in the second episode of the first season.)\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>When TV centers and gratuitously lingers on male members, it can feel as jarring for the viewer as receiving unsolicited dick pics. And \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em> knows how “terrifying” and “horrifying” dick pics can be. “There are two different types of dick pic,” Rue explained in season one. “Solicited and unsolicited. Solicited makes up about one percent of all dick pics sent and received.” At this point, a lot of women are simply sick to death of looking at penises they didn’t expressly ask to see. Actual studies have been done on this topic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, \u003cem>The Journal of Sex Research\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2020.1779171\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">published a study\u003c/a> that concluded:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>In a U.S. sample of 2,045 women of all sexual identities and 298 gay/bisexual men, we found that among those who had ever received a ‘dick pic,’ nearly all (91%) had also received an unsolicited [one]. Women of all sexual identities predominantly experienced negative responses to these unsolicited nude images, with only a minority selecting any positive or neutral/ambivalent reactions.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The other risk of overdoing on-screen peen is the ammunition it gives to so-called men’s rights activists (and a whole mess of other humans) who use the objectification of men to further justify the objectification of women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909409\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13909409\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-800x722.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-800x722.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-1020x921.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-160x144.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM-768x693.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-14-at-12.37.33-PM.png 1090w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘meninist’ meme about objectification.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then there are the campaigners who see this wave of TV penises and think, “Hey! How can we pressure women on our screens to get \u003cem>even more\u003c/em> naked?”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>There is of course a place for naked male bodies on television. It’s absurd that they’ve been such a rarity until fairly recently. It’s also still true that female actors are naked far more than their male counterparts. (We only need look at the nudity stats in \u003cem>Game of Thrones\u003c/em>. There were only two full-frontal male scenes in its entire eight seasons. For women, the show reached that number in Episode 7 alone.) But there are thoughtful ways of showing audiences everyday nudity that doesn’t turn the whole thing into a gratuitous sideshow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Season 3 of \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, for example, there is \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_fV5w5d7IU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a scene\u003c/a> in which Roman tries to send a dick pic to Gerri but accidentally sends it to his father Logan instead. The mortification Roman feels is enhanced by the fact that the viewer sees the intimate photograph too. We, along with Logan, are seeing something we shouldn’t. And its impact is heightened because it’s something we’ve never seen in \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> before. Had the series been a parade of unnecessary penises up to that point, it wouldn’t have been the scream-at-the-TV moment it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Even a show like \u003cem>Sex/Life\u003c/em>, which doesn’t shy away from regular nudity, has figured out how to use it to advance the plot effectively. In the third episode, for example, Cooper follows his wife’s ex-boyfriend into the showers at the gym, only to be stunned by how generously endowed Brad is. The giant (prosthetic) penis featured in the episode wasn’t there for no reason: it was there as part of a storyline about insecurity in relationships. It was there as a traditional symbol of male virility. And it was there to highlight the physical pressures put on men over something they have no control over. Without seeing what Brad was working with, the viewer couldn’t fully comprehend Cooper’s inner turmoil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The frustrating thing with \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em> is that it \u003cem>almost\u003c/em> gets it right all the time. In Season 2’s third episode, we see a flashback to Cal’s high school days. In it, we find out he was in love with his best friend and wrestling teammate, Derek. The moments of nudity they share in the locker room—even exchanging the same bar of soap in the shower—speak to a familiarity and an intimacy that would be hard to convey otherwise. It explains how they reach the point of feeling comfortable enough to dance together and make out in a gay bar despite being submerged in a world of toxic masculinity. Had the nudity been left at that, it would have been a powerful presence in their love story. Instead, we were also subjected to other, irrelevant penises in the shower, and lingering shots of floating underwater penis while Cal and Derek are skinny dipping. These moments undercut the power of their nude locker room bonding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of which is to say that full-frontal male nudity certainly has a valuable place on TV. Not just for the sake of realism in intimate scenes, but also in the service of specific, emotional plot points. But—like a flasher on a train—just because you \u003cem>can\u003c/em> show penis, doesn’t necessarily mean you \u003cem>should\u003c/em> show penis. In the rush to embrace equal opportunity nudity, some TV series have diminished their own value because of an inability to recognize that basic principle.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Kieran Culkin is Having Fun With 'Succession'—and He Hopes You Are Too",
"headTitle": "Kieran Culkin is Having Fun With ‘Succession’—and He Hopes You Are Too | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/1045640636/succession-recaps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>\u003c/a>co\u003cem>–\u003c/em>star Kieran Culkin has grown up on screen. His first gig (when he was 6) was in a commercial, followed by a small part in the 1990 film \u003cem>Home Alone\u003c/em>, which his brother, Macaulay, starred in. But it was only recently, nearly 30 years into his acting career, that something clicked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t remember if it was Season 1 or 2 [of \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>], but I remember coming home from work one day and telling my wife, ‘It’s going really well. … I think I know what I want to do with my life. I think I want to be an actor,'” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13903591']HBO’s \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>is a comedy disguised as a drama about corporate power and greed. Culkin’s character, Roman Roy, is one of three self-involved adult siblings vying to take over Waystar Royco, the family-run media conglomerate, after their elderly father retires or dies. Roman, the youngest brother, is known for his slimy sense of humor and casual zingers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everything is dancing on a line,” Culkin says of his character. “This guy grew up never having to suffer consequences, and so he doesn’t really know what that means to suffer consequences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With previous projects, Culkin wasn’t so invested in audience reception. He’d finish a film or play and move onto the next thing. But with \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, it’s different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I kind of hope people like the show I’m on because I’m having such a good time doing it, so I want to keep doing it,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuDpjl-gJ9A\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On feeling ambivalent about being an actor \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, and I don’t think when you’re 6, 7 years old and you say, “Hey, mom, dad, I want to be an actor” that you’re actually really making a decision for your future. You’re just a kid. So I felt like I’d just been doing it since I was a kid and never actually made the choice to do it. And I think around the age 18, 19, 20, I found that suddenly I had a career that I never decided I wanted, and didn’t really like that. So I kind of tried to stay out of the limelight as much as possible while I figured out what I want to do with my life and, in the meantime, \u003cem>I’ll just do this acting thing as long as I like it and as long as I find a project that I like.\u003c/em> I didn’t necessarily pursue the acting career or success or anything like that. I just enjoy doing work from time to time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On working with such a talented ensemble cast in \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Succession\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>, especially Brian Cox, who plays patriarch Logan Roy \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It just sort of rubs off on you. … Just being in a scene with someone like Brian, there’s a lot less work for me to have to do. … Brian is a force to be reckoned with as a person, so he just brings so much that there isn’t much effort I have to put forward. That’s also really interesting on the show. I agree there’s a lot of extremely talented actors on the show, and a lot of them just work very, very differently and you get to see people’s different approaches and how they can all make it work. … There’s elements of the real [actors] in the character, so it gets blurred a bit. Brian has Logan-y in moments, but for the most part, he’s just a wonderful guy and Logan is obviously not. But you see these little things going, “Is that Logan or is Brian just hungry? Can someone get him a sandwich? He’s about to snap at you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On how all the cursing in the show has affected his real speech \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I would say the F-word just slides out of me. I mean, I think in general, that’s always been a sort of natural word for me. But since doing the show, it’s every sentence, more or less. I’m trying to be careful now because my two-year-old daughter actually has become a mimic. So that one’s been tough. She hasn’t said it yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13906873 aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06.jpg 1705w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On witnessing child stardom via his brother, and how toxic fame is \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was pretty nuts. And I think what people sometimes fail to remember, too, is that he was a kid. He didn’t really choose that. It’s something that happened to him. And I think when you’re a kid, you obviously don’t have the tools to handle something like that. So I think it might have been pretty tough. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13894392']For me, I got to sort of experience it secondhand as a child. So to me, I always have known this is not something one would want to pursue. It’s not a very nice thing, fame. No anonymity, it’s terrible. I have friends that are very famous. They can’t walk down the street without several people stopping them. Forget trying to board a plane. It’s ridiculous. They can’t go out to a restaurant with friends because people are going to come to the table saying, “Oh, I never do this,” or “Sorry to interrupt.” …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people probably enjoy it, and they probably have been able to figure out life with it. But I think for the most part, it comes to people and they go, “Oh, I’ve made a horrible mistake,” and now they have to manage it. That’s the way I look at it. Any reasonable person would not, could not, look at fame and go, “I want that!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On rejection in the industry \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I never and still don’t pay attention to that. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been doing it for a long time. I never looked at it as losing a part. … I’m just not right for it or I am. If the job doesn’t happen, great. If it happens, great. And that’s sort of always the way it’s been. I do kind of remember my father teaching me, like, in an audition, “You work really hard for the audition and the moment you leave that room, you forget about it because it’s not your job. You let it go. If it comes back to you, then great, and you get to do the work again, but you don’t think about that stuff.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being surprised by how much he loves parenthood \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was never something I considered until we did it. Now it is quite actually the greatest—way better than I could have imagined! It doesn’t matter how hard it gets. Like with anything else, you have a job that’s too difficult or a relationship that’s too hard, you just end it. It’s like, done, move on. [With parenthood] it doesn’t matter how hard it gets. It’s always fulfilling and always wonderful. And I’m only two years into it. So who knows, but it’s the greatest thing, way better than I could have imagined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On his ability to memorize lines very quickly \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is something that I can credit towards my childhood acting, because I memorize lines extremely fast. It’s almost like a parlor trick. … I can look at a speech like once or twice, and I can repeat it back pretty quickly. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13868208']I also don’t like running lines, which I know a lot of actors like to do. … I actually don’t like saying the words. I don’t say them out loud when I’m working on them the night before or the day of. I don’t like saying it until I’m in the room saying it. And there was one day … it was a big scene with a big group of us and [Brian Cox] yelled, “We’re running lines!” And then he started in the scene and everybody’s doing it. It came to my part and he looked at me and I said, “Well, I haven’t actually looked at the scene yet.” So I grabbed the sides and I just sort of read it once and then we were called to set and we came in and we just shot it. And he goes, “When did you learn those lines? Just now?” I went, “Oh yeah, just now.” And he went, “Goddamn it!!” And he got so mad because he had to work the night before and try to learn the lines and I looked at it twice and I knew it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Heidi Saman and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Natalie Escobar adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Kieran+Culkin+is+having+fun+with+%27Succession%27+%E2%80%94+and+he+hopes+you+are+too&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/1045640636/succession-recaps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>\u003c/a>co\u003cem>–\u003c/em>star Kieran Culkin has grown up on screen. His first gig (when he was 6) was in a commercial, followed by a small part in the 1990 film \u003cem>Home Alone\u003c/em>, which his brother, Macaulay, starred in. But it was only recently, nearly 30 years into his acting career, that something clicked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t remember if it was Season 1 or 2 [of \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>], but I remember coming home from work one day and telling my wife, ‘It’s going really well. … I think I know what I want to do with my life. I think I want to be an actor,'” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>HBO’s \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>is a comedy disguised as a drama about corporate power and greed. Culkin’s character, Roman Roy, is one of three self-involved adult siblings vying to take over Waystar Royco, the family-run media conglomerate, after their elderly father retires or dies. Roman, the youngest brother, is known for his slimy sense of humor and casual zingers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everything is dancing on a line,” Culkin says of his character. “This guy grew up never having to suffer consequences, and so he doesn’t really know what that means to suffer consequences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With previous projects, Culkin wasn’t so invested in audience reception. He’d finish a film or play and move onto the next thing. But with \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em>, it’s different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I kind of hope people like the show I’m on because I’m having such a good time doing it, so I want to keep doing it,” he says.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/iuDpjl-gJ9A'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/iuDpjl-gJ9A'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On feeling ambivalent about being an actor \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, and I don’t think when you’re 6, 7 years old and you say, “Hey, mom, dad, I want to be an actor” that you’re actually really making a decision for your future. You’re just a kid. So I felt like I’d just been doing it since I was a kid and never actually made the choice to do it. And I think around the age 18, 19, 20, I found that suddenly I had a career that I never decided I wanted, and didn’t really like that. So I kind of tried to stay out of the limelight as much as possible while I figured out what I want to do with my life and, in the meantime, \u003cem>I’ll just do this acting thing as long as I like it and as long as I find a project that I like.\u003c/em> I didn’t necessarily pursue the acting career or success or anything like that. I just enjoy doing work from time to time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On working with such a talented ensemble cast in \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Succession\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>, especially Brian Cox, who plays patriarch Logan Roy \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It just sort of rubs off on you. … Just being in a scene with someone like Brian, there’s a lot less work for me to have to do. … Brian is a force to be reckoned with as a person, so he just brings so much that there isn’t much effort I have to put forward. That’s also really interesting on the show. I agree there’s a lot of extremely talented actors on the show, and a lot of them just work very, very differently and you get to see people’s different approaches and how they can all make it work. … There’s elements of the real [actors] in the character, so it gets blurred a bit. Brian has Logan-y in moments, but for the most part, he’s just a wonderful guy and Logan is obviously not. But you see these little things going, “Is that Logan or is Brian just hungry? Can someone get him a sandwich? He’s about to snap at you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On how all the cursing in the show has affected his real speech \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I would say the F-word just slides out of me. I mean, I think in general, that’s always been a sort of natural word for me. But since doing the show, it’s every sentence, more or less. I’m trying to be careful now because my two-year-old daughter actually has become a mimic. So that one’s been tough. She hasn’t said it yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13906873 aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/2021-12-06-d08ffa0d10b0b4e87e222b7fd448ded7c3b41e06.jpg 1705w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On witnessing child stardom via his brother, and how toxic fame is \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was pretty nuts. And I think what people sometimes fail to remember, too, is that he was a kid. He didn’t really choose that. It’s something that happened to him. And I think when you’re a kid, you obviously don’t have the tools to handle something like that. So I think it might have been pretty tough. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>For me, I got to sort of experience it secondhand as a child. So to me, I always have known this is not something one would want to pursue. It’s not a very nice thing, fame. No anonymity, it’s terrible. I have friends that are very famous. They can’t walk down the street without several people stopping them. Forget trying to board a plane. It’s ridiculous. They can’t go out to a restaurant with friends because people are going to come to the table saying, “Oh, I never do this,” or “Sorry to interrupt.” …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people probably enjoy it, and they probably have been able to figure out life with it. But I think for the most part, it comes to people and they go, “Oh, I’ve made a horrible mistake,” and now they have to manage it. That’s the way I look at it. Any reasonable person would not, could not, look at fame and go, “I want that!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On rejection in the industry \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I never and still don’t pay attention to that. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been doing it for a long time. I never looked at it as losing a part. … I’m just not right for it or I am. If the job doesn’t happen, great. If it happens, great. And that’s sort of always the way it’s been. I do kind of remember my father teaching me, like, in an audition, “You work really hard for the audition and the moment you leave that room, you forget about it because it’s not your job. You let it go. If it comes back to you, then great, and you get to do the work again, but you don’t think about that stuff.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being surprised by how much he loves parenthood \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was never something I considered until we did it. Now it is quite actually the greatest—way better than I could have imagined! It doesn’t matter how hard it gets. Like with anything else, you have a job that’s too difficult or a relationship that’s too hard, you just end it. It’s like, done, move on. [With parenthood] it doesn’t matter how hard it gets. It’s always fulfilling and always wonderful. And I’m only two years into it. So who knows, but it’s the greatest thing, way better than I could have imagined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On his ability to memorize lines very quickly \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is something that I can credit towards my childhood acting, because I memorize lines extremely fast. It’s almost like a parlor trick. … I can look at a speech like once or twice, and I can repeat it back pretty quickly. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I also don’t like running lines, which I know a lot of actors like to do. … I actually don’t like saying the words. I don’t say them out loud when I’m working on them the night before or the day of. I don’t like saying it until I’m in the room saying it. And there was one day … it was a big scene with a big group of us and [Brian Cox] yelled, “We’re running lines!” And then he started in the scene and everybody’s doing it. It came to my part and he looked at me and I said, “Well, I haven’t actually looked at the scene yet.” So I grabbed the sides and I just sort of read it once and then we were called to set and we came in and we just shot it. And he goes, “When did you learn those lines? Just now?” I went, “Oh yeah, just now.” And he went, “Goddamn it!!” And he got so mad because he had to work the night before and try to learn the lines and I looked at it twice and I knew it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Heidi Saman and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Natalie Escobar adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Kieran+Culkin+is+having+fun+with+%27Succession%27+%E2%80%94+and+he+hopes+you+are+too&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>In the pandemic era, the Emmy Awards are not the first major event that can’t be a traditional shindig, but they’re perhaps the most high-profile awards show so far to attempt quite this kind of socially distanced, mask-wearing, virtual ceremony. Host Jimmy Kimmel and everyone producing the broadcast had a pretty tough hill to climb in making it watchable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And surprisingly enough, it was. It wasn’t just watchable; it was … pretty good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The opening bit featured Kimmel apparently doing a typical Emmy monologue, but of course it was just a monologue that they mixed with old audience footage. While it probably went on too long (what doesn’t?), it was a pretty effective way of easing people into this strange format, like going into a cold pool a few inches at a time. I wouldn’t have come up with it as an idea, and it didn’t seem like an especially \u003cem>good \u003c/em>idea as it became clear what they were doing. But it looked better by the time they’d taken it through to Kimmel saying that, of course, they were \u003cem>not \u003c/em>all together, there was \u003cem>not \u003c/em>an audience, and they’d be mostly showing people in remote locations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They did have a sort of skeleton crew on hand with Kimmel, with a few presenters there in person with him, including Jennifer Aniston, Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross. The nominees in each major category were read, and then the nominees would be shown on camera at home, waiting to hear the results. The winners got to make speeches on video, just like the presentations you get to make at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there was something kind of … sweet about it. In some cases, with shows that had many nominations, casts and crews had gathered together, [mostly] wearing masks and in some cases (\u003cem>Watchmen \u003c/em>was one) making sure you knew they’d been tested. The result, while it wasn’t normal (what is?), achieved an intimacy and a genuinely unpredictable quality that is \u003cem>exactly \u003c/em>what’s missing in nearly every awards show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What makes awards shows so bad, so long, such a \u003cem>drag \u003c/em>so much of the time, is that they’re supposed to be celebratory, but they usually carry a weird sense of obligation. They’re often a fairly bloodless march through the categories, interrupted only by people pretending to laugh at bad banter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a number of years now, they’ve been clustering awards in each genre (comedy, drama, etc.) together, but they’ve held out the top prizes for the very end of the show. This year, they just gave everything out at once. That emphasized the sweep of the televised awards in comedy that went to \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek\u003c/em>, a show that never won a single Emmy award before this year, but this year took the comedy awards for lead actor (Eugene Levy), lead actress (Catherine O’Hara), supporting actor (Dan Levy), supporting actress (Annie Murphy), writing, directing and comedy series. For a show that was on for six seasons, seven Emmy awards is not a lot! One award in each of those categories is not a lot. It’s just that they came all at once, and all in a row, and there’s no way for that not to be boring, particularly if you don’t adore \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek \u003c/em>(which, full disclosure, I do).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s worth noting that there were other awards that went to comedies that weren’t part of this broadcast—\u003cem>Insecure \u003c/em>won one for editing, \u003cem>The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel \u003c/em>won one for music supervision, and Eddie Murphy and Maya Rudolph both won for guest appearances on \u003cem>Saturday Night Live\u003c/em>. But on the main broadcast, it was all \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek\u003c/em>, which did make for an awkward beginning. It didn’t help that it came at the expense of a couple of very beloved shows, including \u003cem>Insecure \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Good Place\u003c/em>, both of which have also been nominated and not won in previous years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Things picked up a little as they moved on, although it was still a night with some pretty dominant properties. \u003cem>Watchmen \u003c/em>won big with the top prize for outstanding limited series, plus well-earned awards for actress Regina King, supporting actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and writing by Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson. Other winners in limited series were Uzo Aduba for her great work as Shirley Chisholm in \u003cem>Mrs. America\u003c/em> and Mark Ruffalo for HBO’s \u003cem>I Know This Much Is True\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the drama field, \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>was the big winner. It also managed to avoid the danger of splitting votes between Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox, and Strong emerged the winner. \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>also won for writing and directing. It did not, however, go on a tear of the kind that \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek \u003c/em>did. Zendaya won for her very well-regarded turn in HBO’s \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em>, a welcome win for a younger actor who took the opportunity in her acceptance to acknowledge activism among her peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vote-splitting may have led to the three \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>actors in the supporting actor category losing out. But winner Billy Crudup did have something working for him: He was the one consistently terrific thing about the high-profile but creatively shaky Apple offering \u003cem>The Morning Show\u003c/em>. In the supporting actress category, Julia Garner won for \u003cem>Ozark\u003c/em>, a show that’s been a consistent awards performer for Netflix.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some other winners: \u003cem>Saturday Night Live \u003c/em>for sketch series, \u003cem>Last Week Tonight \u003c/em>for talk series and \u003cem>RuPaul’s Drag Race \u003c/em>for reality competition series.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sunday night wasn’t necessarily an argument that every awards show should be made with all the winners at home. But it was certainly an argument that not every awards show has to look like the dry, fake-laughter-filled productions we get in every other year. One day, the crowds will return. But perhaps some of these innovations would be worth keeping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Emmys+Pull+Off+A+Good+Show+As+%27Schitt%27s+Creek%27+And+%27Watchmen%27+Shine&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In the pandemic era, the Emmy Awards are not the first major event that can’t be a traditional shindig, but they’re perhaps the most high-profile awards show so far to attempt quite this kind of socially distanced, mask-wearing, virtual ceremony. Host Jimmy Kimmel and everyone producing the broadcast had a pretty tough hill to climb in making it watchable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And surprisingly enough, it was. It wasn’t just watchable; it was … pretty good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The opening bit featured Kimmel apparently doing a typical Emmy monologue, but of course it was just a monologue that they mixed with old audience footage. While it probably went on too long (what doesn’t?), it was a pretty effective way of easing people into this strange format, like going into a cold pool a few inches at a time. I wouldn’t have come up with it as an idea, and it didn’t seem like an especially \u003cem>good \u003c/em>idea as it became clear what they were doing. But it looked better by the time they’d taken it through to Kimmel saying that, of course, they were \u003cem>not \u003c/em>all together, there was \u003cem>not \u003c/em>an audience, and they’d be mostly showing people in remote locations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They did have a sort of skeleton crew on hand with Kimmel, with a few presenters there in person with him, including Jennifer Aniston, Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross. The nominees in each major category were read, and then the nominees would be shown on camera at home, waiting to hear the results. The winners got to make speeches on video, just like the presentations you get to make at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there was something kind of … sweet about it. In some cases, with shows that had many nominations, casts and crews had gathered together, [mostly] wearing masks and in some cases (\u003cem>Watchmen \u003c/em>was one) making sure you knew they’d been tested. The result, while it wasn’t normal (what is?), achieved an intimacy and a genuinely unpredictable quality that is \u003cem>exactly \u003c/em>what’s missing in nearly every awards show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What makes awards shows so bad, so long, such a \u003cem>drag \u003c/em>so much of the time, is that they’re supposed to be celebratory, but they usually carry a weird sense of obligation. They’re often a fairly bloodless march through the categories, interrupted only by people pretending to laugh at bad banter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a number of years now, they’ve been clustering awards in each genre (comedy, drama, etc.) together, but they’ve held out the top prizes for the very end of the show. This year, they just gave everything out at once. That emphasized the sweep of the televised awards in comedy that went to \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek\u003c/em>, a show that never won a single Emmy award before this year, but this year took the comedy awards for lead actor (Eugene Levy), lead actress (Catherine O’Hara), supporting actor (Dan Levy), supporting actress (Annie Murphy), writing, directing and comedy series. For a show that was on for six seasons, seven Emmy awards is not a lot! One award in each of those categories is not a lot. It’s just that they came all at once, and all in a row, and there’s no way for that not to be boring, particularly if you don’t adore \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek \u003c/em>(which, full disclosure, I do).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s worth noting that there were other awards that went to comedies that weren’t part of this broadcast—\u003cem>Insecure \u003c/em>won one for editing, \u003cem>The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel \u003c/em>won one for music supervision, and Eddie Murphy and Maya Rudolph both won for guest appearances on \u003cem>Saturday Night Live\u003c/em>. But on the main broadcast, it was all \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek\u003c/em>, which did make for an awkward beginning. It didn’t help that it came at the expense of a couple of very beloved shows, including \u003cem>Insecure \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Good Place\u003c/em>, both of which have also been nominated and not won in previous years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Things picked up a little as they moved on, although it was still a night with some pretty dominant properties. \u003cem>Watchmen \u003c/em>won big with the top prize for outstanding limited series, plus well-earned awards for actress Regina King, supporting actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and writing by Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson. Other winners in limited series were Uzo Aduba for her great work as Shirley Chisholm in \u003cem>Mrs. America\u003c/em> and Mark Ruffalo for HBO’s \u003cem>I Know This Much Is True\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the drama field, \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>was the big winner. It also managed to avoid the danger of splitting votes between Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox, and Strong emerged the winner. \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>also won for writing and directing. It did not, however, go on a tear of the kind that \u003cem>Schitt’s Creek \u003c/em>did. Zendaya won for her very well-regarded turn in HBO’s \u003cem>Euphoria\u003c/em>, a welcome win for a younger actor who took the opportunity in her acceptance to acknowledge activism among her peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vote-splitting may have led to the three \u003cem>Succession \u003c/em>actors in the supporting actor category losing out. But winner Billy Crudup did have something working for him: He was the one consistently terrific thing about the high-profile but creatively shaky Apple offering \u003cem>The Morning Show\u003c/em>. In the supporting actress category, Julia Garner won for \u003cem>Ozark\u003c/em>, a show that’s been a consistent awards performer for Netflix.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some other winners: \u003cem>Saturday Night Live \u003c/em>for sketch series, \u003cem>Last Week Tonight \u003c/em>for talk series and \u003cem>RuPaul’s Drag Race \u003c/em>for reality competition series.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sunday night wasn’t necessarily an argument that every awards show should be made with all the winners at home. But it was certainly an argument that not every awards show has to look like the dry, fake-laughter-filled productions we get in every other year. One day, the crowds will return. But perhaps some of these innovations would be worth keeping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Emmys+Pull+Off+A+Good+Show+As+%27Schitt%27s+Creek%27+And+%27Watchmen%27+Shine&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Roy, Oh Roy: That 'Succession' Finale Was A Trip",
"headTitle": "Roy, Oh Roy: That ‘Succession’ Finale Was A Trip | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>It is hopefully clear that a review and discussion of the \u003c/em>Succession \u003cem>season two finale is not suitable for people who do not want to be spoiled regarding the \u003c/em>Succession \u003cem>season two finale. If it is not clear: You will know what happened on this episode by the time you’re finished reading this piece. Choose wisely. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We began this season of \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> with Kendall Roy half-submerged in what was supposed to be a relaxing spa soak but was more like a very wet metaphor. And he didn’t get his head above water until the last 30 seconds of the second-season finale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were times when this season looked like it might be about Kendall’s sister, Shiv (Sarah Snook)—her father, Logan (Brian Cox), dangled the “top job” at the company, as he calls it, in front of her face, then refused to give it to her. Shiv’s restlessness seemed like perhaps it was the biggest threat to Logan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were times when it seemed like it might be about Kendall smoothly transitioning into being his father’s traumatized but functional right hand. After \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750189331/succession-back-to-the-pit-of-vipers-for-another-season-of-discontent\">ending last season in the weakest possible position\u003c/a>, needing to be rescued from the father he had been trying to overthrow, Kendall became unfailingly loyal. When he put on a good performance at the congressional hearings, it suggested we could be headed for a conclusion where Kendall finally became his father’s favorite—something he wants so desperately that it drips from Jeremy Strong’s performance almost as much as sweat so often seems to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But no. No, Logan decided it was time for a “blood sacrifice,” as he put it—someone who could be thrown to the wolves and blamed for the devastating revelations about Waystar Royco’s cruise division. Someone who would satisfy the shareholders that the problem was being taken seriously; someone who would give those shareholders, as one told Logan on the phone, “cover.” So Logan gathered the family and the top lieutenants—Kendall, Shiv and Tom, Roman (Kieran Culkin), even Greg—on the Roy yacht and watched each one try to respectfully, gently argue that the person sacrificed should emphatically not be them, no offense to whomever they suggested it \u003cem>should \u003c/em>be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The obvious answer was Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), Shiv’s husband. He had been in charge of cruises; he had a logical connection to the crimes committed, even if they predated his leadership. After all, one of the things someone needed to take responsibility for was the cover-up, and Tom carried out key elements of the cover-up. He wouldn’t even have been just a figurehead. Tom had the advantage of being both largely expendable to the family and \u003cem>actually guilty\u003c/em>, not that they would care. Particularly if they threw in poor dopey cousin Greg, Tom’s assistant, they thought maybe that would be enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Snook brought out Shiv’s shocking shrug-it-off energy in the scene—let’s just call it the Roy Family Murder Breakfast—in which she seemed to agree with the group that the blood sacrifice should be Tom. Her husband! Her own husband! Sure, why not? Tom was kinda \u003cem>like \u003c/em>family, she explained, without actually being family. Which you can translate as “he’s close enough for the shareholders to think it really means something for us to hand him over to be sacrificed, when in fact, \u003cem>eh\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it was not to be Tom, because once he and Shiv were in private and he made clear how devastated he was by her betrayal—and once that opened other wounds in their marriage to the point where he questioned its status as a going concern—Shiv shifted gears. She went to her father and said it could not be Tom. By then, it appeared that it was likely to be either Tom or Kendall who would suffer, and Shiv took the coward’s way out: She chose while refusing to choose, saying she couldn’t make the decision … but it couldn’t be Tom. (The degree to which Shiv truly loves Tom has always been an intriguing element of their marriage. Her saving him is a data point, but so was her initially being prepared not to.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so Logan chose Kendall to be sacrificed, breaking the news gently—or what passes for gently in a man whose idea of bedside manner would be leaving you one-third of your ice chips while you’re in the hospital and he’s at your bedside feeling thirsty. Kendall would have to make a statement that he had known about the misconduct in the cruise division, he had engineered the cover-up, he had done it all, and in Logan’s words, it had gone “no higher.” Kendall would sacrifice himself to save his father, and ultimately to save the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when did Kendall decide … not to? When did Kendall decide that instead of falling on his sword, he would stroll into that press conference, whip out a set of note cards and call his father “a malignant presence, a bully and a liar”? When did he decide that even knowing his father could ruin him with the story of the waiter who died after Kendall drove off a bridge, it was over? When did he decide that instead of reciting “I saw their plan; my dad’s plan was better” over and over as he did in the first episode of this season, and instead of saying “my dad told me to” the way he did when he destroyed Vaulter, he would not only sacrifice his father as the mover behind the cruises debacle but reveal his father’s deceitful, vicious personality?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9TKHvvaMfE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My money is on the moment in which, referring to the death of the waiter, Logan repeated an abbreviation that came out of the cruise division, used when a migrant worker or a sex worker died on a ship: NRPI. \u003cem>No Real Person Involved\u003c/em>. It is shorthand, really, for the idea that only some people matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Logan believes in NRPI. Roman believes in it. Shiv just NRPI’d \u003cem>her own husband\u003c/em> until he specifically asked her not to. But Kendall is, perhaps ironically given the protection he accepted from his father, not an NRPI kind of person. He agonized over that accident. He hated himself for shutting down Vaulter—an act he proved he could carry out in an NRPI-style manner, provided he didn’t pay too much attention to feeling his skin go gray and clammy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kendall had already been reminded during the trip that his father doesn’t care about his feelings: Logan had forced Kendall to send his girlfriend away in the middle of the trip, a fresh humiliation that increased Kendall’s isolation. Things built up. Logan’s callous conducting of the Family Murder Breakfast and his announcement that he needed a “skull to wave” showed Kendall how ready his father was to throw away his kids, not to mention faithful lieutenants like Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), Karl (David Rasche) and Frank (Peter Friedman).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Logan told Kendall that his was the skull that would be waved, a resigned Kendall asked him a question. Had Logan ever believed that Kendall could do the top job? After the profound cruelty of acting like he’d never really thought about it, Logan came around to an answer: “You’re not a killer,” he said. “You have to be a killer.” Jeremy Strong’s performance in this critical scene with Cox looks very different on second viewing. What originally played as agonized resignation to his situation and an understanding that he’d have to be the skull, as it were, looks now like agonized resignation to the fact that he will never have his father’s love and approval this way. He’ll never get there by trying to be good and loyal and perfect; that’s what he was doing all season, and he’s still the skull. This family only respects killers. Not the kind who accidentally cause the deaths of waiters, either. Only the kind who kill with ice-cold calculation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that’s what Kendall did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because Kendall, after learning the bad news, wound up on a plane back home with Greg (Nicholas Braun). This was extraordinarily bad luck for Logan, who had no way of knowing Greg had first saved some of the troublesome records Tom told him to get rid of. He had no way of knowing that when Tom found out and insisted on burning what was left, Greg \u003cem>once again \u003c/em>reserved a few in case he ever needed them. Greg spent this entire season being Chekhov’s knucklehead, and ultimately, like all the things metaphorically rendered unto Chekhov, he mattered a great deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to preserve the suspense of the ending, in order to create the gasp when Kendall goes to the press conference and says “BUT” between what sounds like it will be an admission of guilt and what becomes a blast of accusations against his father, we didn’t see what happened on the plane home. We saw Greg gently tell Kendall he felt bad that Kendall had to be the blood sacrifice. And we’ve seen a friendship growing between Greg and Kendall, the only family member who’s ever shown the kid any kindness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Presumably, at some point during that flight, they talked. Greg revealed that he was holding on to the evidence Kendall needed to make accusations against Logan stick. Or Kendall opened up about being unable to get his father’s love. Or both. The key to Kendall’s ability to finally carry out the fully public attack on his father that’s been brewing since season one episode one, the key to Kendall’s escape from his father’s “protection” that’s been brewing since season two episode one? It turned out to be Greg. Greg, who saved his secret papers in a folder labeled “SECRET.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was a season that was enjoyable to watch as it proceeded but that looks far more impressive in light of the finale. It looked at times like they had flattened Kendall’s affect too much; perhaps he was too much changed by the accident after Shiv’s wedding, too devastated and defanged to maintain the powerful dynamic between himself and his father that drove the first season. The character of Rhea Jarrell never entirely jelled, despite the reliable presence of Holly Hunter. The strange sexual connection between Roman and Gerri was picked up and put down a little abruptly, although the notion that they share \u003cem>some \u003c/em>sort of bond flared during the Family Murder Breakfast when Roman rose to her defense. Shiv’s waffling about whether she was really prepared to do battle with her father—spoiler alert: She was not—makes more sense as a prelude to her weakness in the finale. It is Shiv, perhaps, who is not a killer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now, Kendall’s dead eyes all season make narrative sense. The story was going \u003cem>here\u003c/em>, to this place where the torment and the misery accumulated, to where Kendall was willing to blow up his family because it was better than all the other choices. Even the embarrassing tribute rap at Logan’s party is now, in context, just one of the last gasps of his desperate attempt to earn his father’s approval. Now, that rap is just more evidence that Kendall may have looked cold in the old peepers, but in fact he was doing \u003cem>everything \u003c/em>he could think of. He played a relatively non-flashy role in the now-infamous “Boar on the Floor” sequence in the episode “Hunting,” precisely because he was keeping out of as much of the drama as he could. In fact, his role in “Hunting” and at several other points during the season was to do his father’s dirty work without complaint—to inform, to obey, to expose. He was the good son.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last bit of business to deal with is Logan’s tiny hint of a smile as he watches his son accuse him of being a monster. Is he a little impressed that Kendall is more of a killer than he thought? Does he enjoy a fight? Did he somehow \u003cem>intend \u003c/em>for this to happen, so that he himself would wind up being the skull and the company would live on? (That last theory was raised with me by a reader on Twitter, and I must say: I hadn’t thought of it, but I don’t think Logan would gamble that hard with his company.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My vote is for some combination of all of it. Logan doesn’t mind a fight, and he hates weakness even more than aggressive attack. Some part of him only respects people who come for him. That’s not to say he won’t attempt to crush them like bugs as I can only assume he will do with Kendall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are so many lessons to take away from this episode: It is futile to seek an immoral person’s approval if you’re not prepared to be immoral yourself. Even if your husband is a goober, you’re going to feel bad if you offer to let your father destroy him. When you burn a clutch of secret papers, make sure you see them all go. Don’t alienate the tall oddball; you never know what secrets he may be hiding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And finally: If someone writes you a rap, at least try to look grateful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Roy%2C+Oh+Roy%3A+That+%27Succession%27+Finale+Was+A+Trip&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "In the second season finale of HBO's 'Succession,' the Roys regroup after their difficult congressional hearings. It turns out the family that yachts together ties itself into knots together. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>It is hopefully clear that a review and discussion of the \u003c/em>Succession \u003cem>season two finale is not suitable for people who do not want to be spoiled regarding the \u003c/em>Succession \u003cem>season two finale. If it is not clear: You will know what happened on this episode by the time you’re finished reading this piece. Choose wisely. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We began this season of \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> with Kendall Roy half-submerged in what was supposed to be a relaxing spa soak but was more like a very wet metaphor. And he didn’t get his head above water until the last 30 seconds of the second-season finale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were times when this season looked like it might be about Kendall’s sister, Shiv (Sarah Snook)—her father, Logan (Brian Cox), dangled the “top job” at the company, as he calls it, in front of her face, then refused to give it to her. Shiv’s restlessness seemed like perhaps it was the biggest threat to Logan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were times when it seemed like it might be about Kendall smoothly transitioning into being his father’s traumatized but functional right hand. After \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750189331/succession-back-to-the-pit-of-vipers-for-another-season-of-discontent\">ending last season in the weakest possible position\u003c/a>, needing to be rescued from the father he had been trying to overthrow, Kendall became unfailingly loyal. When he put on a good performance at the congressional hearings, it suggested we could be headed for a conclusion where Kendall finally became his father’s favorite—something he wants so desperately that it drips from Jeremy Strong’s performance almost as much as sweat so often seems to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But no. No, Logan decided it was time for a “blood sacrifice,” as he put it—someone who could be thrown to the wolves and blamed for the devastating revelations about Waystar Royco’s cruise division. Someone who would satisfy the shareholders that the problem was being taken seriously; someone who would give those shareholders, as one told Logan on the phone, “cover.” So Logan gathered the family and the top lieutenants—Kendall, Shiv and Tom, Roman (Kieran Culkin), even Greg—on the Roy yacht and watched each one try to respectfully, gently argue that the person sacrificed should emphatically not be them, no offense to whomever they suggested it \u003cem>should \u003c/em>be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The obvious answer was Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), Shiv’s husband. He had been in charge of cruises; he had a logical connection to the crimes committed, even if they predated his leadership. After all, one of the things someone needed to take responsibility for was the cover-up, and Tom carried out key elements of the cover-up. He wouldn’t even have been just a figurehead. Tom had the advantage of being both largely expendable to the family and \u003cem>actually guilty\u003c/em>, not that they would care. Particularly if they threw in poor dopey cousin Greg, Tom’s assistant, they thought maybe that would be enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Snook brought out Shiv’s shocking shrug-it-off energy in the scene—let’s just call it the Roy Family Murder Breakfast—in which she seemed to agree with the group that the blood sacrifice should be Tom. Her husband! Her own husband! Sure, why not? Tom was kinda \u003cem>like \u003c/em>family, she explained, without actually being family. Which you can translate as “he’s close enough for the shareholders to think it really means something for us to hand him over to be sacrificed, when in fact, \u003cem>eh\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it was not to be Tom, because once he and Shiv were in private and he made clear how devastated he was by her betrayal—and once that opened other wounds in their marriage to the point where he questioned its status as a going concern—Shiv shifted gears. She went to her father and said it could not be Tom. By then, it appeared that it was likely to be either Tom or Kendall who would suffer, and Shiv took the coward’s way out: She chose while refusing to choose, saying she couldn’t make the decision … but it couldn’t be Tom. (The degree to which Shiv truly loves Tom has always been an intriguing element of their marriage. Her saving him is a data point, but so was her initially being prepared not to.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so Logan chose Kendall to be sacrificed, breaking the news gently—or what passes for gently in a man whose idea of bedside manner would be leaving you one-third of your ice chips while you’re in the hospital and he’s at your bedside feeling thirsty. Kendall would have to make a statement that he had known about the misconduct in the cruise division, he had engineered the cover-up, he had done it all, and in Logan’s words, it had gone “no higher.” Kendall would sacrifice himself to save his father, and ultimately to save the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when did Kendall decide … not to? When did Kendall decide that instead of falling on his sword, he would stroll into that press conference, whip out a set of note cards and call his father “a malignant presence, a bully and a liar”? When did he decide that even knowing his father could ruin him with the story of the waiter who died after Kendall drove off a bridge, it was over? When did he decide that instead of reciting “I saw their plan; my dad’s plan was better” over and over as he did in the first episode of this season, and instead of saying “my dad told me to” the way he did when he destroyed Vaulter, he would not only sacrifice his father as the mover behind the cruises debacle but reveal his father’s deceitful, vicious personality?\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/l9TKHvvaMfE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/l9TKHvvaMfE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>My money is on the moment in which, referring to the death of the waiter, Logan repeated an abbreviation that came out of the cruise division, used when a migrant worker or a sex worker died on a ship: NRPI. \u003cem>No Real Person Involved\u003c/em>. It is shorthand, really, for the idea that only some people matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Logan believes in NRPI. Roman believes in it. Shiv just NRPI’d \u003cem>her own husband\u003c/em> until he specifically asked her not to. But Kendall is, perhaps ironically given the protection he accepted from his father, not an NRPI kind of person. He agonized over that accident. He hated himself for shutting down Vaulter—an act he proved he could carry out in an NRPI-style manner, provided he didn’t pay too much attention to feeling his skin go gray and clammy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kendall had already been reminded during the trip that his father doesn’t care about his feelings: Logan had forced Kendall to send his girlfriend away in the middle of the trip, a fresh humiliation that increased Kendall’s isolation. Things built up. Logan’s callous conducting of the Family Murder Breakfast and his announcement that he needed a “skull to wave” showed Kendall how ready his father was to throw away his kids, not to mention faithful lieutenants like Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), Karl (David Rasche) and Frank (Peter Friedman).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Logan told Kendall that his was the skull that would be waved, a resigned Kendall asked him a question. Had Logan ever believed that Kendall could do the top job? After the profound cruelty of acting like he’d never really thought about it, Logan came around to an answer: “You’re not a killer,” he said. “You have to be a killer.” Jeremy Strong’s performance in this critical scene with Cox looks very different on second viewing. What originally played as agonized resignation to his situation and an understanding that he’d have to be the skull, as it were, looks now like agonized resignation to the fact that he will never have his father’s love and approval this way. He’ll never get there by trying to be good and loyal and perfect; that’s what he was doing all season, and he’s still the skull. This family only respects killers. Not the kind who accidentally cause the deaths of waiters, either. Only the kind who kill with ice-cold calculation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that’s what Kendall did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because Kendall, after learning the bad news, wound up on a plane back home with Greg (Nicholas Braun). This was extraordinarily bad luck for Logan, who had no way of knowing Greg had first saved some of the troublesome records Tom told him to get rid of. He had no way of knowing that when Tom found out and insisted on burning what was left, Greg \u003cem>once again \u003c/em>reserved a few in case he ever needed them. Greg spent this entire season being Chekhov’s knucklehead, and ultimately, like all the things metaphorically rendered unto Chekhov, he mattered a great deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to preserve the suspense of the ending, in order to create the gasp when Kendall goes to the press conference and says “BUT” between what sounds like it will be an admission of guilt and what becomes a blast of accusations against his father, we didn’t see what happened on the plane home. We saw Greg gently tell Kendall he felt bad that Kendall had to be the blood sacrifice. And we’ve seen a friendship growing between Greg and Kendall, the only family member who’s ever shown the kid any kindness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Presumably, at some point during that flight, they talked. Greg revealed that he was holding on to the evidence Kendall needed to make accusations against Logan stick. Or Kendall opened up about being unable to get his father’s love. Or both. The key to Kendall’s ability to finally carry out the fully public attack on his father that’s been brewing since season one episode one, the key to Kendall’s escape from his father’s “protection” that’s been brewing since season two episode one? It turned out to be Greg. Greg, who saved his secret papers in a folder labeled “SECRET.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was a season that was enjoyable to watch as it proceeded but that looks far more impressive in light of the finale. It looked at times like they had flattened Kendall’s affect too much; perhaps he was too much changed by the accident after Shiv’s wedding, too devastated and defanged to maintain the powerful dynamic between himself and his father that drove the first season. The character of Rhea Jarrell never entirely jelled, despite the reliable presence of Holly Hunter. The strange sexual connection between Roman and Gerri was picked up and put down a little abruptly, although the notion that they share \u003cem>some \u003c/em>sort of bond flared during the Family Murder Breakfast when Roman rose to her defense. Shiv’s waffling about whether she was really prepared to do battle with her father—spoiler alert: She was not—makes more sense as a prelude to her weakness in the finale. It is Shiv, perhaps, who is not a killer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now, Kendall’s dead eyes all season make narrative sense. The story was going \u003cem>here\u003c/em>, to this place where the torment and the misery accumulated, to where Kendall was willing to blow up his family because it was better than all the other choices. Even the embarrassing tribute rap at Logan’s party is now, in context, just one of the last gasps of his desperate attempt to earn his father’s approval. Now, that rap is just more evidence that Kendall may have looked cold in the old peepers, but in fact he was doing \u003cem>everything \u003c/em>he could think of. He played a relatively non-flashy role in the now-infamous “Boar on the Floor” sequence in the episode “Hunting,” precisely because he was keeping out of as much of the drama as he could. In fact, his role in “Hunting” and at several other points during the season was to do his father’s dirty work without complaint—to inform, to obey, to expose. He was the good son.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last bit of business to deal with is Logan’s tiny hint of a smile as he watches his son accuse him of being a monster. Is he a little impressed that Kendall is more of a killer than he thought? Does he enjoy a fight? Did he somehow \u003cem>intend \u003c/em>for this to happen, so that he himself would wind up being the skull and the company would live on? (That last theory was raised with me by a reader on Twitter, and I must say: I hadn’t thought of it, but I don’t think Logan would gamble that hard with his company.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My vote is for some combination of all of it. Logan doesn’t mind a fight, and he hates weakness even more than aggressive attack. Some part of him only respects people who come for him. That’s not to say he won’t attempt to crush them like bugs as I can only assume he will do with Kendall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are so many lessons to take away from this episode: It is futile to seek an immoral person’s approval if you’re not prepared to be immoral yourself. Even if your husband is a goober, you’re going to feel bad if you offer to let your father destroy him. When you burn a clutch of secret papers, make sure you see them all go. Don’t alienate the tall oddball; you never know what secrets he may be hiding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"soldout": {
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