‘Succession’ Creator Jesse Armstrong Settles Debate Over Whether or not Kendall Roy’s Identify Was Underlined or Crossed Out

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong as soon as and for all settled a serious debate from its fourth and remaining season.

Within the fourth episode of the Emmy-winning sequence, titled “Honeymoon States,” household and pals of the Roys collect in Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) house to mourn the dying of the household patriarch. In the course of the wake, Frank (Peter Friedman), who’s the executor of Logan’s property, finds a “somewhat worrying piece of paper” in a non-public secure.

The typed doc appeared to call Kendall (Jeremy Robust) as Logan’s successor to media empire Waystar Royco. However a line that began beneath Kendall’s title and moved up by way of it raised the query of whether or not Logan was noting him because the successor by underlining his title or crossing it out as if to say he didn’t need Kendall on the helm.

When the outdated guard — Frank, Karl (David Rasche) and Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) — collect in a room to debate what the paper means with Roman (Kieran Culkin), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Kendall, Roman factors out that the doc is outdated, and Kendall has “tried to place him in jail, like, 12 occasions since then.”

Whereas the sequence by no means answered whether or not Kendall’s title was crossed out or underlined, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong simply did.

Throughout an look at a Monetary Instances occasion in London on Saturday, recorded by journalist Cassam Looch, Armstrong defined he would’ve hated to reply a query like this whereas the present was working, however now that it’s over, he doesn’t thoughts.

“In case you have been gonna cross out, you wouldn’t begin beneath, would you?” he requested the group, earlier than somebody shouted, “Underlined!”

At one other level within the dialog, the Emmy-winning author recalled subtly preparing Matthew Macfadyen for the sequence end result, which noticed his character, Tom Wambsgans, take over as CEO after the media empire’s merger with GoJo.

“Sometimes, I might remind him to do a take the place it was like, do keep in mind — this was earlier on within the present — it could possibly be you as nicely,” Armstrong shared, “simply to verify he had that factor about [how he’s] a suck-up who additionally had some metal that could possibly be activated at a sure level.”