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How Succession’s Jeremy Strong “lost touch with joy” while playing Kendall Roy on the hit HBO series

How Succession’s Jeremy Strong “lost touch with joy” while playing Kendall Roy on the hit HBO series

Like playing Kendall Roy during the award-winning series Consequence I haven’t messed with Jeremy Strong enough, the character is still taking its toll on the actor.

The “f***** me up” part, Strong, 45, recently told British newspaper The Sunday Times, describing how he was overwhelmed by the tortured son he portrayed from 2018 to 2023 – on screen and offscreen. Strong’s infamous acting methods also put him in the crosshairs of his co-star and on-screen patriarch, Brian Cox, and terrified the HBO show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong.

The actor, who had just completed a quiet retirement, said he imagined terrible things happening to him to mentally prepare himself for the role of Kendall. While working on the series, he “sometimes lost touch with joy” and only recently “rediscovered gaming.”

His character, who sought to succeed his ailing father as CEO of the fictional media and entertainment conglomerate Waystar Royco, earned Strong his first Emmy television award in 2020 and two additional nominations. The series received 19 Primetime Emmys, six of them at the beginning of the year for its fourth and final season.
Brian Cox (left) and Jeremy Strong in the second season of Succession. Cox criticized Strong’s approach to the series. Photo: TNS

“This show was an invaluable gift. The material a banquet. So I miss that. But Kendall’s struggle was hard to bear for seven years. And I just want to do so much more,” said Strong, who also gave up on the idea of ​​a Kendall spinoff.