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Succession was a big winner at the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, January 7 with the fourth and final season winning Best Television Series – Drama as well as in acting for Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, and Matthew Macfadyen.
On the same evening, series executive producer and director Mark Mylod opened up about Season 4’s biggest episode, “Connor’s Wedding,” during a screening at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City as part of Curator’s Choice 2023. The installment otherwise known as Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) death episode was screened for attendees first, and then Mylod spoke.
(Credit: David M. Russell/HBO)
There Was No Blocking
When it comes to composing shots as a director, blocking is used to help determine where characters will be as a scene is filmed. Rehearsals help with the blocking process, but according to Mylod, that wasn’t a priority in shooting this episode, which saw the majority of the Roy family aboard a ship for Connor’s (Alan Ruck) wedding to Willa (Justine Lupe), while Logan took off on a plane.
“I’ve become basically a sneaky little s**t. And they know my game,” Mylod joked of his approach. “They know when they’re being secretly manipulated, but they go with it because we’ve built trust together in the process.” Ultimately, the director noted that a lot of the action has to do with location, whether it’s on deck of the boat where you can see and feel the city or the smaller enclosed rooms aboard the boat as the kids learn about their father’s incapacitated state on the private plane he’s flying in. “I’ve set up a place where they basically have to go,” Mylod pointed out.
“I would never [say to any of them], ‘Can you walk in here? And then at this point maybe you could walk over there, maybe then you could sit down.’ It just doesn’t work like that…” At the end of the day, raw emotion was key, and Mylod stated he tried to keep it “as spontaneous as possible.”
(Credit: HBO)
Logan’s Dead Body Obstacle
When it came to showing Logan’s lifeless body onscreen, Mylod admitted he was hesitant. “I felt oddly squeamish about it,” Mylod shared. Torn between his emotions surrounding Cox’s exit from the show and the reality of the story unfolding, the director couldn’t exactly decide where his reluctance came from. In a show that has had some sadistic twists and turns, Mylod said, “I wanted to keep the audience in doubt about [whether or not Logan was pulling a trick on the kids] as well. If they don’t definitively see his dead body there, if it’s just out of the frame without appearing… then I thought we gained something in terms of experiencing what the kids are experiencing.”
Instead, a body double was paid to lay in Cox’s place for much of the episode, but his position on the floor created an interesting directing obstacle, according to Mylod, “I know I can put an obstacle in there that’s going to booby trap the actor. They’re going to have to deal with it organically,” he shared, noting how characters like Frank (Peter Friedman) had to step over Logan’s body to get to another portion of the cabin of the jet, adding to the dramatic elements.
One Shot & 3 Cameras
As Mylod put it, from the moment the Roy kids find themselves in a private room aboard the ship before receiving the fateful call, leading up to the moment where Connor has been told the news and the siblings have convened as Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) and Hugo (Fisher Stevens) begin discussing the unfolding situation, that was essentially one shot, or at least captured in one go.
“We worked with three cameras,” Mylod said (the series was shot on 35 mm film). “Normally we only worked with two.” On the last day shooting aboard the boat, Mylod asked the cast to run the 28-page sequence in one go, noting, “I’d already kind of said that I was working towards that and they were up for it, everyone. So we worked it through technically and we did it… we did it in one take.” When he called cut, the director recalled, “I thought I was going to cry. It was probably the kind of creative zenith of my career, and I know that I don’t say that lightly. I’m getting emotional just thinking about it.”
Succession, Seasons 1-4, Streaming now, Max
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