“Our showrunner-writer didn’t know.”
Succession star Kieran Culkin has shared that his co-star had unwavering hope that the Roy family would make it to season five.
Fans will know that this is now impossible with the hit show coming to a dramatic conclusion in season four, with the final episode airing at the end of last month.
However, the youngest member of the Roy family has revealed that his on-screen sister Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) thought there would be a fifth season of the HBO show.
Speaking to Variety in an interview with his Igby Goes Down co-star Claire Danes, Culkin disclosed when he found out that Succession was ending after season four.
Culkin shared that it wasn’t until the table read of the last episode that the cast found out it was the conclusion of the show, and that up until that point, Snook had been championing a fifth outing.
Danes asked: “So when you started your fourth and final season of Succession, were you aware that it was the final?”
Culkin replied: “Not really.” He added that showrunner-writer Jesse Armstrong “didn’t know” the show’s fate at first, or didn’t let slip that he did.
“He told me before the season started that he thinks this is the end, but he doesn’t know,” the actor said.
“He told me what happens with Logan, and I asked him to break down everything. And he explained the entire season to me. And then when he got to the end, I said, ‘Well, that seems like that’s the end of the show.’
“And he goes, ‘Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? Although …’ And then he just started talking about all these different ideas off the top of his head.”
Culkin said Armstrong then went on to pitch the idea for “an amazing fifth season and then another and another”.
Danes joked that Armstrong then “denied” the cast a fifth season which he said he saw coming.
Culkin said: “He kept us guessing the whole time. There were some of us that were so sure that there was not going to be another season. Sarah Snook, the entire time, until the very end, was like, ‘There’s going to be a fifth season’.
“And had very clear ideas on what it was. And it was after the table read for the final episode, he told us.”
Fans are still recovering from the final twists and backstabbing in the last few episodes, with the season finale bringing in an impressive audience of 2.9 million viewers.
