Backstabbings and betrayals ran wild in the Season 3 finale of “Succession,” which received 25 nominations from TV Academy voters on July 12, leading all series. In the season’s final scene…
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Backstabbings and betrayals ran wild in the Season 3 finale of “Succession,” which received 25 nominations from TV Academy voters on July 12, leading all series. In the season’s final scene, the audience watched several shocking twists unfold that promise to send the future of “Succession” into an entirely new direction.
According to director and executive producer Mark Mylod, though, the original ending in the script was different.
“The script was always very clear that Shiv would see Tom, and that would be the end of the season,” Mylod said. “But it didn’t feel right to cut to black to that moment.”
So as they filmed the scene, they found what ended up being the actual final shot of the season: Sarah Snook’s character Shiv Roy staring angrily into the distance as her husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) offers her false comfort. Tom, after all, has played Shiv.
“We did what we always do, which was to work and evolve and semi-improv to find that moment,” Mylod continued. “I can’t remember whether I’d asked [Snook] or whether it was just an instinct to come towards the camera — to basically walk into her own close up. And then obviously Matthew’s character followed.”
With Macfadyen standing behind Snook, Mylod said they’d arrived at the ending: “All right! That’s it, now we can cut to black.”
Mylod was joined his fellow Emmy nominees — co-stars Snook and Macfadyen — for Variety’s Making a Scene presented by HBO, wherein they broke down the tense ending of Season 3, and examined Tom’s betrayal. Instead of backing Shiv, his wife, and his brothers-in-law Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin), Tom instead chooses to alert their father, Logan (Brian Cox), that they’re coming to the villa in order to stop him from selling Waystar Royco, the family company, to tech entrepreneur Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård).
For Snook, the scene was intense and difficult to perfect.
“There’s a lot of pressure, I guess, to get it right,” Snook said. “We had scheduled to shoot it over two days, unfortunately with a weekend in between — which was going to be difficult. And because of the nature of the scene, there’s upwards of eight people with all conflicting objectives and opinions and desires. So there are scenes within the scene as well.
“In terms of scenes, it’s a monster one.”
In Mylod’s eyes, the twist of the finale was always coming.
“Throughout Season 3, we were working to earn that moment,” he said. “Exploring that marriage of Shiv and Tom’s, and how that was falling apart. And suddenly in Tom’s gradual stewing of that, we were getting to the point where we actually just had to earn that Tom would do that. Through his eyes, he would have no choice but to do that.”
Macfadyen said he understands exactly why Tom made that decision.
“I mean, he has had this awful threat of prison hanging over his head for much of the show,” Macfadyen said. “When he is released from that threat of going to prison and they are just going to have to pay a fine, Siobhan, his wife, maybe was not that concerned — and was slightly disappointed. So it’s a sort of growing realization that maybe his wife, he can’t really trust her. And he does offer himself to Logan as this sacrificial lamb, and Logan accepts it. He has some currency with his father-in-law and his boss.”
Mylod described watching Season 3’s final moment unfold before him. “They walked into this tight two-shot, and I could see her face and Matthew’s character could not,” he said. “And then you have that juxtaposition — and we the audience were the voyeurs that could see that rage and everything we needed to in her face.”
Watch the full conversation in the video above.
Caroline Framke contributed to this report.
