‘Succession’ Director Mark Mylod Had to “Walk a Tightrope” to Nail the Finale

Still wondering how Succession stuck the landing? Luckily, director Mark Mylod dropped by VF’s Still Watching podcast for a special bonus episode, where he discussed the roller-coaster ride that was the Roy family’s final moments.

Mylod admits he feels “unstable” in a post-Succession world, even months after filming wrapped. For that final episode, Mylod homed in on “the cruelty of hope” that was inherent in the whole structure of the series. “When I’m reading it, even though I know where it’s going, I’m still thinking, Oh, actually they could be happy. There was a life where they could escape the gravitational pull of Waystar and actually live free and independent lives, and have healthy relationships.”

Of course, that life did not come to pass. To underline the eventual devastation of the Roy siblings, Mylod thought it was important to first show them on a high, getting along swimmingly during the “meal fit for a king” scene—which coincidentally was the final scene they shot. “There was something gorgeous about being able to shoot that last,” he says. After the kitchen scene wrapped, the set devolved into a food fight, with Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin shaving Jeremy Strong’s head.

“Kieran came up to me and, um, cracked a number of eggs onto my head. Sarah and Kieran taking turns shaving Jeremy’s head very quickly. We were either covered in hair or eggs or both,” Mylod recalls. “And then there was a kind of, almost crew-wide jump into the ocean to clean off all the crap. In fact, we all ended up on that little float that Jeremy’s character was on when he is anointed with the crown. And I think we sank it, because there were so many of us on it.”

While Barbados was all fun and games, everything fell apart for the Roy siblings in that climactic boardroom scene ahead of the GoJo vote. Mylod calls the boardroom scene “probably the most important episode of the series,” pointing out the “greenhouse effect” that was created by filming the Roy children’s fight through glass doors.

“The reason for that staging [was] really to give them no way back,” Mylod says. “There had to be a finality to it, beyond just the outcome of the vote. There had to be an emotional finality to it as well—which, you know, we’ve had some pretty fraught scenes between those characters over the years. So to go beyond that to a place where there’s no coming back, without going melodramatic or just too screamy or violent…it was walking a tightrope there to keep it emotionally true and suitably devastating.”

Listen to the last episode of Still Watching’s Succession season—but still feel free to email [email protected] with your own questions, comments, and thoughts about the series finale.