Staying Fit
HBO
HBO’s darkly comedic family drama Succession returns for its much-anticipated third season this month. The Emmy-winning series follows the power struggles and petty squabbles of a super-rich family of media moguls that includes patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox, 75) and his four children: Connor (Alan Ruck, 65), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook). If you haven’t been watching, you’re missing out on a tale of loyalty, corruption and greed that makes it a worthy successor to HBO’s past Sunday night dramas like The Sopranos and Game of Thrones. Here’s everything you need to know about the show before the third season premieres on Oct. 17.
The Roys are not just the Murdochs
Many viewers look at the billionaire Roys — who own cable news networks, newspapers, theme parks, a film studio and a cruise line — and immediately think of the Murdochs. While it’s true that show creator Jesse Armstrong, 50, has written a still-unproduced script about Rupert Murdoch, 90, and his kids, he says that Succession draws from a wider net of influences. “We thought of famous media families like the Hearsts, to modern-day [Sumner] Redstone, John Malone, Robert Fitz of Comcast, Murdoch, and Robert and Rebekah Mercer, who founded Breitbart,” Armstrong said in an interview with HBO.com. In a fun twist, a few members of these inspirational families have admitted to watching the series. Rupert’s granddaughter Charlotte Freud told Tatler magazine that scenes feel “plucked from [her] childhood memories,” and his fourth wife, model Jerry Hall, 65, counts herself as a huge fan.
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The Succession cast has deep ties to Broadway
For such a quintessentially New York show, it should come as no surprise that much of the cast is drawn from the Broadway talent pool. A theater legend in the U.K., Cox has nonetheless crossed the pond to appear in five Broadway productions, most recently starring as Lyndon B. Johnson in 2019’s The Great Society. Jeremy Strong appeared in A Man for All Seasons, while Kieran Culkin starred in This Is Our Youth by playwright-screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan (58). In a fun twist, Lonergan is married to J. Smith-Cameron, 64, the Tony-nominated actress who steals scenes as Waystar RoyCo’s general counsel Gerri Kellman. Other Tony-nominated cast members include Peter Friedman, 72, who plays COO Frank Vernon, and Arian Moayed, who plays Kendall’s college friend Stewy.
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