Host Roger Bennett is joined by the haunted, hip hop slinging, dead-eyed, try-hard heir apparent to your favorite media, cruise and theme-park empire, Jeremy Strong, aka Kendall Roy. Jeremy discusses the extremes he goes to meet his character, Kendall's relationship with his father, and the one line that caused him to turn against his family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
My job, at least last season, was to be in hell.
And so I had to find ways to do that for myself that I found very difficult and painful.
And God knows I didn't want to do it anymore.
And then I meet Kendall.
That's when I understand what he's going through.
Its Roger Bennett and this is HBO succession podcast.
My guest today is the haunted, hip hop slinging, dead eyed try hard air apparent to your favourite media cruise and theme park empire.
A broken robot who lives to self sabotage his own attempts to grapple for control of Waystar Roiko, to grapple for control of his life, to be honest, against that manipulative, sadistic patriarch father of his, a techno Gatsby character fueled by hunger for power, betrayal and Kettermene, the CEO of Pain and Crestfallen despair, played by a man who's known to disappear into every performance he gives and has been called an actor's actor, capable of unfurling some of the most nuanced, committed work on television.
He's the Theon Greyjoy of succession, the real walking dead.
Welcome to the pod.
Jeremy Strong.
That is a mighty introduction.
Thank you, Jeremy.
I revere you.
There is a Tracy Chapman's album worth of sadness in Kendall Roy.
He's a remarkable amalgam of total arrogance and total insecurity.
Sees his father both as a false God and a deity he wants to worship.
Is Kendall the manifestation of the most profound question every kid must answer?
The extent to which they want to become the person their parents expect or actualize as an independent human being.
That's the crux of the question and of the struggle and certainly where Jesse is hanging the entire show.