Before Kieran Culkin began filming Succession’s pilot, he made one distinct character choice about Roman—the second-to-youngest Roy sibling he would end up playing for four seasons of the Emmy-winning HBO series.
“This is a guy who’s felt like he’s never had to suffer any consequences. He can always blag his way out of something. He can always talk his way out of it or pay his way,” Culkin tells VF in a phone call. And for most of the series, that statement remained true—his actions, remarks, and unsolicited nudes went unchecked. Even in season four, as Roman’s grief roller coaster led him on a whiplash journey involving a mountaintop breakdown, impulsive executive firings, and helping fix a presidential election for a fascist candidate, the character continued operating like a foul-mouthed despot.
But in the series’ penultimate episode, “Church and State,” Roman finally accepts that his father’s death is one situation he can’t slickly contort himself out of. At the podium during Logan’s VIP funeral, the character suffers an Emmy reel-ready emotional implosion.
Even when Logan died, Roman “still believed that this is going to be fine,” Culkin explains from Poland, where he’s filming a movie with Jesse Eisenberg. But in Sunday’s episode, Roman slowly realizes that his father’s death and its impact on him “isn’t okay, and it’s never going to be okay,” says the actor. Roman “doesn’t know how to deal with that. This is the first time, I think, in his life where he felt like he had absolutely no control or say in the situation.”
Ahead, the actor tells VF about filming Roman’s funeral breakdown, not wanting to know about the character’s sexuality, and Succession creator Jesse Armstrong pitching him on fifth-season ideas.
Vanity Fair: It seems like Roman’s been hit hardest of the siblings by Logan’ passing. Why do you think that is?
Kieran Culkin: I’m sure we’re all hit pretty hard. Everyone just has their different coping mechanisms. I’ve always felt that he had a very unrealistic sense of family—he always felt the closeness to everyone and felt the most comfortable when they’re all together in the same room. You don’t often see Roman out with his friends. I don’t think he has many. For our entire lives, the center of our universe was Dad. And now he’s gone. And what do we move around now?
What’s funny is when we did the wake episode [404, “Honeymoon States”] and Roman said he pre-grieved [and was fine], I remember sort of feeling like, “That doesn’t seem right.” I think he’s in-tune with himself enough to know, “even if I’m having a nice moment, I’m probably not fully through this.” And Jesse, by the time he was writing episode 5, came to me and said, “I’m a little worried that I might have put you on the wrong trajectory with the pre-grief thing. I’m not sure that’s right.” And I was like, “No, it’s O.K. You can feel one thing one day, and then another, you’re different.” Emotionally, he’s been on a rollercoaster. I don’t think he knows when it’s going to hit him.
Right. We’ve seen him have this mountaintop breakdown in one episode, and then spontaneously fire Gerry (J. Smith-Cameron) and the Waystar studio head. But in the election episode, he was this diabolical force—more clear-eyed and motivated than either of his siblings.
Which is great, because I almost never get to do that in the show. Whenever that happens, I’m usually bouncing off Shiv’s [opinion] which is fun. Last season when we were trying to pick the candidate—the Mencken vs. Jiménez argument—those scenes were fun. You’re talking or yelling over each other. I love when Roman actually has a very clear point of view and a clear pitch. You said “diabolical,” but the way Roman sees it, Mencken really is the best thing for the company.
It was surprising seeing him go from the election episode, where he is taking charge, to “Church and State,” where he goes up to give his father’s eulogy and his facade crumbles. How did you find out about Roman’s breakdown?
This was the only season where I indulged Jesse in letting him tell me what was going to happen with Roman. In the past, I liked not knowing [until getting the script]. I’m not sure why, but I wanted to know more this year. He mentioned that [scene] early, and I wasn’t sure if it was a full breakdown, but he basically said, “You get positioned to be the guy, and you shoot yourself in the foot by just being a human being.”
I imagine part of the breakdown is a reaction to hearing his Uncle Ewan’s [James Cromwell] eulogy, where he learns some pretty traumatic truths about Logan’s childhood.
I remember thinking it could be connected to that, and specifically not wanting to read Ewan’s speech in the script. I didn’t want to know what he was going to say. Roman had a plan to go up and razzle dazzle [the mourners]. And Ewan interrupts—and [the unraveling] starts from the frustration of something not being part of the plan, and then continues with him being pretty devastated by the stuff [Ewan] was saying. It was a good jumping-off point because now it’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to follow that.” I just felt very lost. We didn’t rehearse it and I really did not want to rehearse it—even on the couch the night before. I just kind of looked at the lines vaguely and went, “I don’t want to look at this. I don’t want to plan or think about how this is gonna happen.” Which was also terrifying, because I don’t know that I can do that stuff.
How many times did you film the breakdown?
I haven’t seen it, but I think [they used] the first take. Stuff like that is hard to keep reliving. That scene sort of happened, and I forgot this was a TV show where we have to do takes and coverage. It was like, “We did it and. . . Oh, good, we’re doing another.” A lot of stuff happens on the show that is not planned or rehearsed or talked about [beforehand]. When it happens, it’s really lovely and hard to recreate.
And they shot that continuously, so you were hearing Ewan’s speech for the first time and immediately going up to speak afterwards in the same take?
For the very first take of the funeral, we did the entire funeral. The entire thing. They had like, four cameras going—they were doing wides and closeups on whoever’s up there doing the speech. There’s a camera close to us in the pews [getting reactions], and then a big wide [shot]. [Director Mark] Mylod is the only person I know who can execute that so efficiently and come into rooms full of background actors and an entire crew and just give a big loud speech, like to a troop, saying, “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to run the entire sequence, which is the large majority of the episode, in one take without rehearsing it and we’re going to film it. And probably a lot of this is going to get used.”
I was going to say, it must have been a lot of pressure to do that breakdown scene in front of hundreds of extras, but to do that in that circumstance. . .
And have the terrifying fear that I haven’t thought about how to do it or practiced it, and oh, there’s a lot of people who I don’t know [sitting there], and an extra crew brought in for all the background actors.
Early in the episode Roman makes a couple standard Roman jokes about having sex with his sister and with Marcia. How much thought have you put into Roman’s psychology, sexuality, and sense of humor?
I specifically don’t want to think about the sexuality. I don’t think he has that down or actually really understands what that is, so I don’t want to understand it. There’s a good analogy I heard about a golf swing—I don’t fucking play golf so I don’t know—but there are nine very specific things you’re supposed to do in a golf swing. But if you want it to be perfect, you have to learn all of them and forget all of it. So I don’t want to have to learn every aspect of him and then work extra hard to not know.
There’s something I intuitively sort of understand about his sexuality and that sense of humor. I find that stuff to be really easy, particularly when you have the right sort of audience for it. [Sarah] Snook or Shiv being grossed out when I make a joke about having sex with her. . . it’s so much fun to make both the actor and the character squirm.
At the end of the episode, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) sits down with Roman, who is still very much going through his emotions, and says some devastating things to him. It seems doubly heartbreaking because, for all of his twisted humor, Roman seems to hold the siblings’ relationship more sacred than Kendall and Shiv do. How was it filming that?
Jeremy and I are both in that camp of, “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not rehearse it. Let’s just see what happens.” I remember feeling like, I’m sitting there and no one is talking to me because no one knows what to say. And he comes over and, for a moment, it’s like, “Okay, good. I know I’m not going to get a nice warm hug exactly, but here comes my brother, and he’s going to give me some sort of nice words.” Then he says in this matter-of-fact way that I’ve just let everyone down.
I remember trying to jump in because I actually didn’t want to hear what he had to say to me.
Then we see Roman go outside, in this self-destructive state, and walk into the protesting crowd. Can you talk about filming that scene?
We did it as written, but sometimes Jesse will be like, “There’s a crowd of protestors and Roman goes into the crowd.” I was like, “I think I know what he means here, but I wasn’t quite sure. Do I walk against them? Do I just go and sit with them?” He was like, “There could be a reality where you yell at them first and provoke them. There could be a reality where you shove them. You could literally just stand there and block them and not say a word.”
So we had to find it on the day. That was a long night, and we did a couple different versions. In one, this guy yelled something at me, I yelled back, he gave me the finger, and he had such a smug look on his face that it just really pissed me off. I leapt over the barricade to try to find him and I couldn’t and I get shoved in this sort of pre-planned stunt thing. Then we were told we had [to start filming] quietly, not just for the sound department, but because of the hour and that it was right on Fifth Avenue. So we had one take that was so full of life. And then the rest of the evening was us having to use our imagination.
What do you think Roman’s thinking in that moment? Is it just that he wants to feel something?
He definitely has a self-destructive streak. It could be to feel something. It could be acceptance. Sometimes it takes a while to get to that moment of, “Oh, I’ll never properly get over this.” I think he thought he could handle anything.
In the election episode, I thought maybe Roman really is best suited to be Waystar C.E.O. He was so motivated and singular in his vision in a way his siblings weren’t. After this episode, do you think Roman is still best suited of his siblings to run the company?
Absolutely. I’ve actually felt that for a while. I mean, is he more suited than say, Frank or Karl or Gerri? No. But if it’s going to be one of Logan’s children, absolutely. People underestimate him a lot. He is the most like his father in the way that he runs things and can read people. Especially when he has a clear point of view, there’s no stopping him.
We’ve talked about grieving Logan, but have you grieved Roman now that you’re done filming the show?
Somebody asked me that this morning. I definitely would’ve liked to have done more, but it’s my first time doing a series. When you do a movie, it’s like, “Sure, I’ll miss the guy, I’ll miss the crew. But I did the thing. It’s done now.” I feel happy with the work. I always felt confident that if Jesse says this is the end, then it’s the end.
I’m still holding out unrealistic hope that Jesse will change his mind and make a season five.
Jesse described to me the whole season before we shot. I asked him one question and when he answered it, I said, “Well that sort of sounds like the end of the show.” He goes, “Yeah, it does.” But then he just threw up three different ideas for a season five that he claimed were off the top of his head. I was like, “I’m just speaking my speak my mind here. But those all sound like really awesome.”
Can you share any of those season five ideas?
Nope, not without spoiling the end. You haven’t seen the last episode yet, have you?
No. I haven’t.
It feels like an ending, but it also feels like there could be more. So it made me understand his struggle. He struggled with it all season while we were shooting. He was like, “Really? This is the end. But I’m not sure.” He didn’t tell us [it was the last episode] until we did the table read for the last episode.
See, there’s some uncertainty there. We can work with that.
Well, watch the finale. Then let’s see how you you feel.
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