HBO’s hit family drama Succession is gearing up to release it’s fourth and final season in just a few short days.
Like Game of Thrones before it, Succession has a relatively simple premise — who will ultimately inherit the Iron Throne/Waystar RoyCo. — that breeds a whole lot of drama. While our own families might not resemble the exorbitantly wealthy Roy clan, we can’t help but wonder where Succession creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong got the idea for the family behind the fictional multimedia conglomerate.
Armstrong has stressed multiple times throughout the years that the Roys are a fictional family but admits he was inspired by multiple sources when creating the show. In a 2018 interview with Variety, Armstrong said, “There’s loads of succession stories to draw on. We wanted to draw on all the good, rich stories there are about succession and about media and high politics.”Armstrong’s not wrong — succession is a common theme in both real life and fiction, giving him plenty of material to pull from for Succession.
The real families behind Succession
The truth is, Succession‘s main family is not inspired by one family, but several. The most obvious real-life comparison to the Roy family is the Murdochs; Rupert Murdoch is the 92-year-old head of News Corp, one of the most influential media companies in the world. Through News Corp, Murdoch owns hundreds of news publications in multiple countries, including The Sun, The Daily Telegraph, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and broadcasting channels such as Fox News.
With a fortune worth over 21.7 billion, Murdoch is one of the wealthiest businessmen in the world and despite his advanced age, he has yet to hand it off to one of his children, much like the show’s premise. Armstrong has openly admitted the Murdochs helped inspire Succession — he even worked on a screenplay about the patriarch — but actor Brian Cox, who plays Waystar RoyCo. founder Logan Roy, pushes back against the comparison. “He’s not Rupert Murdoch, he’s certainly not Donald Trump, and he’s not Conrad Black,” Cox told Town & Country in a recent cover story.
In a talk with HBO, Armstrong shared he and the Succession writing room was inspired by multiple families in publishing. “We thought of famous media families like the Hearsts, to modern-day Redstone, John Malone, Robert Fitz of Comcast, Murdoch, and Robert and Rebekah Mercer, who founded Breitbart. Lots of real-life moguls. We collected a myriad of these kinds of relationships that we knew about.”
It isn’t just publishing royalty that inspired the Roys. In that same 2018 Variety interview mentioned above, Armstrong and executive producer Adam McKay admitted to discussing Queen Elizabeth and the royal family in the writing room. Managing the monarchy and the expectations that come with it can’t be dissimilar from running a billion-dollar company, and shows such as The Crown have shown us there’s plenty of drama to take inspiration from. By choosing not to base the Roys on one family, Armstrong and his crew were able to create main characters who feel both fresh and familiar all at once.
