Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Succession Season 3.
From creatorJesse Armstrong, the highly acclaimed and much-beloved HBO drama seriesSuccessionis further exploring the power dynamics in the Roy family in Season 3, which are shifting in a rather perilous way that feels like it could take down anyone in its path at any time. After Kendall’s (Jeremy Strong) decision to expose the depths of the company’s scandal, patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) has pitted his other adult children – including Shiv (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Connor (Alan Ruck) – against each other, wanting them to spy, snitch and claw their way into what could become a family civil war.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Culkin talked about why he sometimes gets annoyed with Roman, how much he enjoys playing the character, how easy it is to jump back into the character when they return for a new season, how he hopes for at least five seasons of the show, what he most enjoys about the Roman-Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) dynamic, how collaborative things are with the creative team, that wild birthday party of Kendall’s, and Roman’s mental state by the end of Season 3.
Collider: Did you miss Roman in the time between finishing filming Season 2 and filming Season 3, or is he someone that you’re happy to pack away for a bit?
KIERAN CULKIN: Both. I definitely miss him, but then there are times when I’ve worked long days, five days a week, with lots of talking, and I just start to get a little bit annoyed with the sound of my own voice, but Roman’s. Roman talks a lot and it’s fast. Sometimes it’s just relentless. I soak up a day off. It’s nice to have time away from it, but then I’m like, “I kinda miss it. I wanna jump back in.” But I think we have quite a bit of time before we jump in.
As the time gets longer, whether it’s because of COVID or just because they’re writing, does it get more challenging to get back into character, or is he someone you get into pretty easy because he is so specific?
CULKIN: I always worry between seasons, and after the pilot too, that it’s gonna be hard or it’ll feel different or that it isn’t quite it, but the first day and the first day is like, “Oh, yeah, that’s it. That’s the show. It feels like we didn’t even take a break.” Between Seasons 2 and 3, that was a very long break, but I remember that first day or the first couple of moments being like, “Oh, yeah, we’re back. Okay.” It really did feel like we were shooting [the week prior]. Now that we’ve done that, I feel pretty good that Season 4 will probably be the same. It would be really sad, if I was told that I never got to do it again, but knowing that it’s coming, it’s fine. It’s just gonna be a lot of fun when we get to it.
Jesse Armstrong has said that it could just be one more season or maybe two seasons, but that it probably wouldn’t be more than five seasons. How do you feel about possibly only playing him for one more season? Is he a character you’d be sad to say goodbye to?
CULKIN: Yeah, absolutely. I get the instinct to not let it go on too long, but for me personally, I could just keep doing this. There are times, towards the end of the season, that get difficult, and this season was really long. It was actually so much fun, but also quite difficult. Not difficult because the work actually isn’t. It’s at once not hard at all, and it’s effortless because it’s fun, and very hard. It can be tiring towards the end, where I feel like I need a break. But then, I get a short break and I wanna keep doing it because I miss it. If we only do one more, that would make me sad. If we did at least five, I think I’d feel satisfied, but I would probably be quite happy to do more. If we are doing five, I’d like to think that he would think, “Hmm, I see where we can go with this,” and maybe pop a sixth out.
Or at least like come up with a plan for the Roman and Gerri spinoff.
CULKIN: There we go.
What do you enjoy about where they’re at in Season 3? There’s an interesting dynamic shift in Season 3, where it feels like she’s trying to keep him in a specific box.
CULKIN: Yeah, she’s trying a little harder because she’s made CEO, or at least interim. She’s worked really hard to get to that position and she has to make sure nothing spoils it, and then here comes the spoiler – th guy who’s gonna potentially ruin her life. So, yeah, she works a little bit harder to keep Roman in check this season, which is a nearly impossible task.
RELATED:Sarah Snook on ‘Succession’ Season 3, Being On the Birthday Party Set, and Figuring Out Shiv’s Dancing Scenes
What do you enjoy about playing with J. Smith-Cameron? There’s something so fun about watching the two of you because it feels like you’re both game for whatever and sometimes that dynamic gets a bit strange. What do you enjoy about exploring that with her?
CULKIN: Yeah, it’s strange. I like that. I like that there’s quite a few things going on there. It’s not one thing. It’s something and nothing, all at once. He definitely means it, but he really doesn’t mean it, which is just a tremendous amount of fun to play. Working with J., I’ve known her for a long time. We were friends before the show, and I’ve also seen her work a lot and know that she happens to be fantastic, so coming into work, after we got picked up, because she wasn’t in the pilot, seeing that she was cast as Gerri, that was actually my first day at work back and I was like, “This is gonna be so much fun.”
It was already built-in there. I’ve seen her on stage a lot. She’s an amazing actress, so I knew that. And the, I knew her personally and there’s a friendship there, so there was a good chance that we’d be able to work off each other pretty well. It just works well. It always feels easy and it’s a ton of fun, when I know the next day, I’m doing a scene with just me and J. Not that it makes the air, but they let the cameras roll and they let us just go, but just for us to help inform us, the actors, as to how these people would interact. It’s just tremendous fun. She’s one of the best scene partners anyone could have.
Do you feel enough of a sense of ownership of the character where you feel comfortable making suggestions about the character or dialogue or things like that, or do you try not to get involved in that way?
CULKIN: No. The writers write it. I wouldn’t go in and say, “I think Roman does this.” This very rarely happens, but if there was something that I felt like, “Oh, that doesn’t seem right,” I’ll voice it and know that I’ll be heard. Usually, I see something and go, “That doesn’t seem right. I wanna ask about that.” And I would wait, and then a new draft would come in and it would be fixed. Every time, after a table read draft, I have a thought of, “This doesn’t feel like Roman,” but it inevitably always gets fixed. But I don’t get to go to the writers’ room and throw out ideas. You’re not supposed to do that. Some people do. But there’s a sense of ownership, in terms of the character, in the sense that if there is something that feels wrong or just out of place, or if there’s something that feels different, I can talk about it and we can discuss it. It is, to a certain extent, a collaboration in that way. I’m not shut down. We’re working on this together. My one job is Roman, so I can say, “I don’t think he would say that, and here’s why,” and it would be heard.
There was a table read draft of a scene with me and Shiv, and the next draft, they just swapped our dialogue. It was interesting that they thought these two ideas for these two characters could be swapped. I talked to [Sarah] Snook about it and we didn’t, at first, have a strong opinion on it, but then we decided together that we quite liked the first one. We had a reasoning for it, and we talked to the writers and they were like, “Okay, you’re right. Let’s go back to the first one. Let’s go with the first.” That was cool. That’s an example of that, but that’s not really influence. They wrote it. We just said, “Hey, I think Shiv and Roman would actually be doing this.”
Kendall’s birthday party was quite the lavish affair, but it was also very odd, from the strange representation of their mother’s vagina to the nursery, to the tree house. What was it like to walk onto that set to shoot an episode that is just so odd and strange?
CULKIN: Yeah, man, I’ve gotta give a lot of that to the set designer. That episode came in really late. A little bit ahead of time, they were like, “We’re thinking of doing this,” but that script came in and it was like, “Okay, you’ve got a week to build this stuff.” It was insane, what was asked of them to do, walking into the party through the mother’s vagina and there’s these babies swaddled and a nurse and people were drinking from baby bottles in that room, in the background. I don’t know how much that was featured. And then, you had to go through Kendall’s oversized crib and there was memorabilia of his life. It’s so unsettling. I found it so gross that he thinks his life is that important. I know he’s trying to be ironic and like, “No, I’m pretending that I think my life is that important,” but it’s such an unsettling feeling, walking through Kendall’s idea of humor.
Without spoilers and without telling me why, how would you describe Roman’s mental state, by the end of Season 3?
CULKIN: It’s funny because it does take quite a journey, just thinking about where the last season ended. From the end of Season 2 to the start of Season 3, it’s the same day, but I feel like in that day, there are a lot of changes. The night before, Kendall being asked to take the fall and potentially go to prison for a very long time while I’m also promoted and I get the thing that I’ve been working for, Roman should be very happy that he got this promotion, but instead there’s just this pit in his stomach because of what his father has asked his son to do. It’s awful. And then, Kendall does what he does at the press conference, and it’s awful for the company, but emotionally, it’s almost better for Roman because now he has an enemy that he can attack.
Now, he has a trajectory and he doesn’t have to feel sad about this thing anymore. He’s got this brother that he can take down. It starts with that aggressive thing. And then, in that episode, it seems like he’s almost ready to step up. He calls his dad on the phone and tells him he’s ready, but then he shoots himself in the foot. But throughout the season, I can see him actually finding his own voice and getting a backbone and finding out that he is actually capable of doing this job. It is quite a journey for Roman this season. It keeps getting better and better for him, until it just maybe doesn’t work out so well.
Successionairs on Sunday nights on HBO, and is available to stream at HBO Max.
