‘Someone said ‘you should probably just move to the desert and die’: Jeremy Strong on getting the perfect scene in ‘Succession’

In case anyone missed the news, Jesse Armstrong recently finished solving television after overseeing the end of Succession, the Max dramedy that recently etched itself a place in the history of broadcast storytelling after a series finale worthy of the masterclass he’s been crafting for the last five years.

It’s been a few weeks since we said goodbye to America’s most insufferable family, but it could be quite some time before we forget about the moments that the fourth and final season served up, particularly those we encountered in “Connor’s Wedding,” the third episode of the show’s fourth season and, apparently, the site of one Jeremy Strong‘s ascent to the peak of his artistic career.

In a recent Drama Actors’ Round Table courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, Strong, who plays Kendall Roy on the show, opened up about his experience participating in the episode’s emotional set piece of the siblings learning of their father’s death, recalling how he received a call from a fellow actor afterwards jokingly telling him to “move to the desert and die” since he’ll probably never get better material to work with ever again.

I felt at the end of that scene, like… Somebody texted me the other day, an actor, said ‘you should probably just move to the desert and die’… This is as good as getting to be an actor gets, working on material like this.

The actor would go on to divulge the groundbreaking stage directions he received for the scene, with Armstrong apparently having written such guidelines as “[Kendall’s] on the sharp tip of Manhattan, but also history,” and “the world was both off its axis, but still solid, and [Kendall] felt like he could be a wraith or a super-being.” Indeed, it sounds like Strong wasn’t exaggerating even a bit in saying Succession scripts are as good as it gets. We hope he enjoys the desert.

All seasons of Succession are available to stream on Max.