KENDALL ROY’S ALTERNATE ‘SUCCESSION’ ENDING WAS WAY DARKER, AND JEREMY STRONG HAS DETAILS

In case you still haven't watched the final episode of Succession yet, (1) be real: how hard has it been avoiding all the spoilers on Twitter? and (2) apparently, there's a much darker alternate ending for Jeremy Strong's character Kendall Roy. But before we get into it, be warned! There are M-A-J-O-R finale spoilers ahead. 👀

A brief Succession ending refresher first: The explosive series finale ends with all three siblings having v different reactions after Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) is named the new CEO of Waystar Royco. Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) finds the nearest bar and low-key looks relieved about how it all went down, and Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) leaves with her husband Tom in one of *the* most iconic car scenes. Meanwhile, Kendall walks through the city and gazes out at the East River—with his late father's trusted bodyguard Colin not too far behind—before the credits roll.

Though in my humble opinion Succession could not have ended more perfectly, Jeremy Strong (who is known for being a method actor) said he actually thought about heaving himself into the water during his final moments as Kendall.

“Listen to the John Berryman poem that Jesse [Armstrong, the show's creator] has named these finales after. John Berryman himself died by suicide, jumping into the frozen river,” the actor explained to Vanity Fair in a recent interview.

“I tried to go into the water after we cut—I got up from that bench and went as fast as I could over the barrier and onto the pilings, and the actor playing Colin [Scott Nicholson] raced over. I didn’t know I was gonna do that, and he didn’t know, but he raced over and stopped me. I don’t know whether in that moment I felt that Kendall just wanted to die—I think he did—or if he wanted to be saved by essentially a proxy of his father.”

Jeremy added that the decision for his character to potentially die by suicide was a bit more nuanced: “I also don’t know if [Kendall] would’ve had the courage to actually go in that water, because my God, it would’ve been hard to do. But I think you even feel on a cellular level the intention or the longing to cross that threshold...The way [Jesse] leaves us with a kind of ambivalence stays true to his vision.”

Though there are tons of ways viewers could (and have) read into the ending, Jeremy still maintains: “What I love about the way Jesse chose to end it, it’s a much stronger ending philosophically, and has more integrity to what Jesse’s overall very bleak vision is of mankind—which is that fundamentally, people don’t really change. They don’t do the spectacular, dramatic thing. Instead, there’s a kind of doom loop that we’re all stuck in, and Kendall is trapped in this sort of silent scream with Colin there as both a bodyguard and a jailer.”

WATCH 'SUCCESSION' ON MAX HERE

2023-06-01T16:09:31Z dg43tfdfdgfd