‘Succession’ Director Mark Mylod Breaks Down Kendall’s Ending, That Violent Hug and Shiv’s Heel Turn: It’s ‘Screamingly Inevitable’
variety.comEthan Shanfeld SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers from “With Open Eyes,” the series finale of HBO’s “Succession,” now streaming on Max. The end of “Succession” was filmed on the coldest day of the year. “The windchill was minus-something in Fahrenheit, and it was absolute purgatory to shoot,” says Mark Mylod, the director and executive producer who has steered many of “Succession’s” greatest episodes. “Jeremy initially was feeling nothing but cold.” Mylod, who has now helmed all four season finales of the HBO juggernaut, was worried that the last scene — with Jeremy Strong’s Kendall hopelessly walking through Battery Park, and Logan’s leftover bodyguard Colin trailing behind — didn’t feel “weighty enough.” Then, they followed what has become a leitmotif for Kendall throughout the series and drifted toward the Hudson River, to feel the “gravitational pull of the water on the character.” “We hit what was, to me, a golden theme,” Mylod tells Variety. “We ran a 10-minute take with a 1,000 foot roll of film, and just kept shooting.” At one point, Strong, a famously immersive performer, improvised by darting over the railing and toward the frigid water, causing his scene partner Scott Nicholson to chase after him and bring him back to safety.
With both actors still in the scene, they continued filming. “We hit this beautiful, rich vein down by the water where Jeremy was just in the zone,” Mylod says. “By the end, I just knew we had something that felt worthy of that massive responsibility of being the last scene of the series.” In an interview with Variety after the series finale of “Succession,” Mylod broke down the show’s tragic yet “inevitable” ending, as written by the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong — that
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