‘Succession’ Director Mark Mylod on Potential Spinoffs, That Awful Milkshake and The Shot That Still Haunts Him
Mark Mylod is still kicking himself over something in Season 4 of “Succession.” The series’ final installment has been universally lauded, and the general consensus is that the HBO drama stuck the landing. But for Mylod, the executive producer/director who is once again Emmy nominated, he can’t stop thinking about something — and he won’t reveal what it is just yet.
“I will do the kicking myself thing. And I’ll take no pleasure in the stuff that maybe has worked well,” he tells Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast. “It’s the mistakes you’ve made, or the things you could have done better in the moment that you’ve missed. There’s something I missed in one of the episodes in Season 4, it’s not necessarily a mistake, but it’s an opportunity to have taken a moment further. And it kills me. It eats me up and it genuinely is too raw now to kind of admit it.”
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Nonetheless, Mylod is gratified by the response to the end of “Succession,” and the satisfaction that he and creator Jesse Armstrong feel that the series ended on the right note. (He still has some humorous ideas for a reboot, however). In this episode, Mylod (Emmy-nominated for the “Succession” episode “Connor’s Wedding”), talks about the end of the show, his idea for a spin-off, and also the impact of his recent film “The Menu.”
But first, on the Awards Circuit Roundtable, Paris Barclay, the Emmy-nominated director and executive producer of “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” sits down with us to talk about the Emmys, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the DGA, “Dahmer,” his career (including those LL Cool J videos) and more. Listen below!
Mylod says he experienced “massive relief obviously that the [finale] episode and the season generally was well received. Jesse and I, with each kind of new season just have a conversation of, ‘OK, is this the year we get found out?’ Is this the year unconscious complacency creeps in and we just slip our standard? Just the fear of that and the insecurity of that, I suppose that’s also been a spur to both of us. And I think speaking for the whole team, when you’ve got writing that good you really want to do it justice.”
In speaking about “Connor’s Wedding,” Mylod describes what went into that nearly half-hour scene that takes place both on the wedding yacht and on Logan Roy’s plane in the aftermath of Logan’s death. In particular, he talks about Matthew Macfadyen’s performance on the plane, and how he wound up using more of that footage because it was just so good.
“I remember watching it back in the edit and just thinking there’s almost a version of this an alternative cut you could do this episode where you just stay on the plane with with Matthew and and his colleagues the entire time and you only hear the siblings off camera,” he says. (And yes, we suggested he go back to HBO and ask to do just that.) “It was such almost an embarrassment of riches having all that material.”
Mylod also talks about the final scene the production shot: You know the one. It’s where the siblings — Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) create that awful garbage milkshake concoction for Kendall to drink.
“The awful milkshake scene is one of my favorite. That happened to be the very last thing that we shot,” Mylod says. “It was actually really hard to shoot. And the stink in that kitchen. Yeah, I can’t even begin to tell you. Jeremy is Jeremy and he’s all or nothing, as we all know. I’d shoot the whole thing start to finish, that’s just the way we do things. And each time he just he couldn’t stop himself. He was just so in the moment that even if I called cut, I think he’d still be in it. I would call cut, he’d put the thing down lean over and wretch into this wastebasket next to him. It was so disgusting this stuff that was going into it.”
Overall, Mylod says he’s pleased that the show ended when it did. “And Episode 3 particularly on some level for me represented the zenith of the whole kind of creed that we’d evolved over four seasons in how we shoot the show how we try to milk every ounce of tension or intimacy, just to work every moment,” he says. “In that particular scene or chunk of the episode, from the moment the siblings first get that call from Tom on the plane to when they tell Connor and they migrate upstairs onto the top deck for more privacy, it was such an unbroken kind of stream of consciousness in the writing beautiful writing from Jesse as ever, that in my head kind of cried out for that total immersion for everybody, particularly the cast obviously. And so just working the problem with all of the crew — and everybody made a contribution to kind of solving the problem of how to shoot a half hour unbroken take when when a roll of film only lasts 10 minutes. on over three levels of the deck — it was so incredibly satisfying not just to kind of solve the puzzle but but going into the edit afterwards and seeing that flow of performance in the immersion of the cast in that. It felt like like the craft and the whole way that we make the show was really servicing the script in the best possible way.”
Variety’s “Awards Circuit” podcast, produced by Michael Schneider, is your one-stop listen for lively conversations about the best in film and television. Each week “Awards Circuit” features interviews with top film and TV talent and creatives; discussions and debates about awards races and industry headlines; and much more. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or anywhere you download podcasts. New episodes post weekly.
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