Director Mark Mylod of “Succession” discusses how close Episode 3 came to ending and how long that death had been planned

Warning: This interview contains major storyline spoilers for “Connor’s Wedding,” the third episode of Season 4 of “Succession,” which is currently streaming on HBO Max.

Many “Succession” fans anticipated that the show’s patriarch Logan Roy, a businessman of unrivalled genius and a churlish father who loves his children (despite all evidence to the contrary), would pass away at some point during the show’s last season. Given that Logan, portrayed by Brian Cox, suffered a stroke in the 2018 series opener of HBO’s Emmy-winning drama, there has been continuous anxiety for his health.

But Logan perished in episode three? A complete shock to the “Succession” country.

Connor Roy (Alan Ruck) and his siblings Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Shiv (Sarah Snook) are gathered on a boat in “Connor’s Wedding,” written by “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong and directed by executive producer Mark Mylod. Logan is travelling to Sweden on a Waystar Royco plane with his executive team in order to try to save the GoJo deal.

The news of what happened on the plane, where Logan had collapsed and was receiving (likely futile) treatment, spread to the boat in a staccato, inadequate, and frustrating manner thanks to Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), Shiv’s estranged husband, who was an inadequate messenger for the medical event.

As Logan’s children swerve wildly through their pain, “Connor’s Wedding” is both heartbreakingly dramatic and pulsating, with a real-time vibe.

The day after the episode aired, Mylod spoke with Variety about directing “Connor’s Wedding,” where he discussed how he shot the scenes on the boat where the Roy family is dealing with the tsunami of Logan’s death, that spontaneous hug between the siblings, and what the episode’s final shot almost was.

You were first informed by Jesse Armstrong that Logan would pass away this season at what point?

I believe we were in pre-production for Season 3 at the time. It was back when we were filming Season 3. He initially mentioned this to me at that time, along with the idea that it should occur early in the season during an unexpected episode slot and the hope that tremendous drama may be made out of the inconvenience of it all. which to me just seemed amazing.

We visited HBO and spoke with Casey Boys, Francesca Orsi, Nora Skinner, and the rest of the crew; they were really encouraging.

But there was a great deal of anxiety. This character in contemporary television drama is tremendously compelling, and Brian is a fantastic performer. He has a lot of weight, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So, the decision to actually kill off that character is significant and terrifying.

Was he intending to pass away off-camera from the beginning? A scenario in which we could have witnessed it, or at least the events leading up to it, ever existed?

Jesse undoubtedly went through a number of situations in his mind as he imagined it. However, once it focused on the discomfort of it — the absence of drama, if you will — it suddenly felt so grounded. In the present era, a sudden death is communicated by phone call, text message, or even email. Not a death scene from a Shakespeare play.

Focusing on the difficulty of attempting to obtain the information just seems so interesting and novel in terms of the structure of how we manage and tell the story of the death of this significant character. Our narrative centres around an information and audience-driven media empire. Aside from the amazing technique of placing the audience somewhat inside the brains of the characters and their aggravation of: “Is this really happening?,” there is also the idea of the irony of not being able to obtain that information. What’s going on, what’s going on?”

How did you choose your general visual strategy with the kids at Connor’s wedding and the other characters on the plane, given all of that?

Upon reading that, it became immediately clear to me that the camera needed to be a sadist due to the treatment of the siblings aboard the boat. That it was necessary to place the lens squarely in those helpless people’s faces. Find the ones who are hurting the most and push a lens right in their face in the worst type of paparazzi fashion. Keep it there as long as you can, being as unyielding as you can, and don’t take it away. It seemed incredibly cruel. However, it also seemed like the appropriate course of action.

And we made an effort to do it. We attempted to keep the cameras as close to their faces as we could for as long as possible once they had the news and were trying to understand it and find out more about it. We use 35mm film for our photography, thus the main problem was that it expires after 10 minutes. We use two cameras for filming. After shooting in those segments through those scenes, there was a full half-hour chunk of the real-time story, starting when the characters first go upstairs and get the call from Tom and ending when Kendall goes outside and talks to Frank. At that point, it felt as though it had to be shot in real-time.

Wow, OK.

So I said, “Is there a way we can do this? ” to the cast and crew. Can we have a continuous take of 30 minutes?That’s what we did, too. The actors were enthusiastic. In order to keep at least one camera running constantly while the other was practically racing to conduct a super-fast reload and start shooting again, the camera team was fantastic in that we essentially concealed camera magazines all over the place and a third camera body tucked behind the door.

The actors simply kept going, going, going, going over this half-hour period, while the team danced around them to cover it, and we ended up with this wonderful ballet between the company and the camera crew. If you’ve seen the show, you can see what the outcomes were. It has a certain intensity. And a sizable portion of that take was included in the final product.

That was the approach on the boat, a segment we shot first over the course of about a week. The original objective when filming on the plane was for us to see very little — very, very little — of Tom in that first portion before moving on to the post-compressions forensic component. But Matthew was so incredibly captivating that we found ourselves in an incredible bind when trying to balance the intercut between the two settings. More often than we had anticipated, Matthew was seen on camera. That problem was a joyful one.

Oh, I see. Matthew was going to talk to them on the phone constantly. However, you were unaware of how much of him you would be exposing.

Absolutely correct, absolutely. We were supposed to be able to hear Matthew’s voice at all times when it was written. Additionally, Matthew was constantly available on the phone while we were filming on the yacht. He was actually in London at the time; the poor chap frequently stayed up with us till two in the morning. Naturally, that is his actual voice, live and in-the-moment, coming from the phone.

The rest of the cast, including the other siblings, were waiting for him off-camera as we boarded the plane to give him some sort of quid pro quo. Our guiding principle is that they will stand by one another in times of need. But yes, we really used a lot more of him on camera than we had anticipated.

Just in terms of photographic grammar, the other strange, unanticipated conundrum was how much or how little of Brian’s character, Logan, who is prostrate, should be shown. It had a peculiarly contemptuous feeling about it. I wasn’t sure if I was just feeling nauseated or if it was appropriate to resist that instinct. When I brought it up in conversation with Jesse, he expressed the same sentiments I did. I believe there will likely be a reasonable consensus when we both agree.

As a result, we went ahead and did that, only revealing Brian’s or Logan’s face once in what I hope is a very moving scene involving the phone in his ear and Shiv’s futile attempt to speak to or reach him while his heart is still being compressed.

What were the technicalities involved? It was either a double or a dummy. Brian, was that you?

I was reluctant to ask Brian. Instead of asking Brian to lie down and act dead for a few days or weeks, it would be extremely difficult for him. He wasn’t asked to do that by me. When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, 90% of the time, there was a stunt double down there. Since we clearly had to undergo all of these cardiac compressions, we required a stunt double who could withstand having their chest compressed for the majority of the day. And the person who assisted us in that was a talented stunt performer. The camera would occasionally briefly pan over his torso.

The image you see of Brian lying on the ground while still experiencing heart compressions is actually a composite image. It’s actually Brian’s head and the stunt double’s body because I wanted the compressions to go on safely. In order to fit the rhythm, we added some rhythmic activity to Brian’s head in post-production.

The first few scenes of the episode clearly include Brian. What was it like for him to film those last few sequences, and how was he feeling?

It is definitely up to him to convey how he felt. We all found it to be really depressing. In particular, the reality check that occurred when it came time to conduct the table read for his final episode, in which we all assembled and performed the scene in real time. The thought that this would be our final table read with him really sunk in at that point. The following scenario would be our final one with him.

Fortunately, we had already started working on a plan: Brian would continue to appear in later episodes in order to try to keep this episode’s secret. In order for us to see him later on and possibly dispel rumours that the character had passed away, he would even make an appearance in a much later episode. He was so constantly present.

However, when it came to actually acting as Logan on set, we were just incredibly unhappy. And Brian was, I’m certain of it.

Is it a flashback scene from an upcoming episode?

Not a flashback, please. No, we basically bring him on to shoot dummy scenes — scenes that didn’t actually exist — for the material in a later episode. as a diversion.

Well, I see! Was the plane a set on which you were filming?

After Season 1, it became clear that we would be spending a lot of time on the primary Waystar plane. Construction of the fuselage on a soundstage made financial sense. That’s what we did, then.

Normally, it feels fairly opulent, but during that time, it feels incredibly cramped. Less so if an emergency occurs. What were the difficulties with that?

Even though it seems rather macabre, I truly liked it. Because there was such a closeness to our firm during the boat shot as well as the aeroplane shoot. When we felt most like an antiquated theatre rep company, it was then. We were all aware that we were filming the final season, and as a result, the cast was incredibly close to one another. Oddly, there was a genuine happiness about that.

The first step in shooting and arranging the aeroplane scenes was to get the mise-en-scène right, which required finding out exactly what would happen if someone on a private flight suffered a heart attack or heart failure and what they would do. So we had conversations with various doctors and watched a demonstration on how to operate a defibrillator, among other things. You always revert to reality and genuineness. Just authenticity will do. And we’ve always been obsessed with that kind of thing.

How much time was allotted for shooting the episode?

Not more than a typical episode’s duration: I believe it lasted 12 or 13 days. It wasn’t a difficult episode, strictly speaking. The small incongruity is that, on the one hand, we’re shooting a lot of pages in a single day because I wanted this performance flow. However, several of those pages need to be shot twice; first, pages 10 through 40 must be shot on the boat, and then pages 10 through 40 must be shot on the plane on the opposite side.

Rarely is “Succession” a heartbreaker. But I cried a lot during this episode since it was so intense. When you were directing it, did you experience that?

Yes, thank goodness. After that initial take, Jesse and I were in pieces when Sarah and I made the call to her dad for the first time. She actually hit the mark in a way that only Sarah can. That was great.

Again, when we went to the airport in Westchester to photograph the three siblings giving the press conference, they simply fell into that nice, unplanned three-way hug, which I thought was very lovely.

Oh! Not in the script, was that?

No. There, they simply naturally fell into one another, which was stunning. Then the three characters split up, Sarah moving in that direction, and Shiv still needed or wanted Tom’s assistance at that precise moment, despite everything. I found it quite moving that Roman felt compelled to board the plane in order to view his father’s body, leaving Kendall by herself. That day of filming was really hectic. However, it was quite emotional for each of us.

How did you decide on the winning shot? That Jeremy Strong would respond as Logan’s body descended from the aircraft and that the focus would be on Kendall.

It was written that way, which makes it sometimes simple and sometimes difficult. For example, in the Season 3 finale, we struggled to discover it and had to improvise beyond that to find it. We filmed far beyond that in this instance, as we always do, simply because I never say cut until the movie has been released. He watched the body come down in those nearly identical staged moments. However, because of how they were feeling at the time, Jeremy’s character in certain takes genuinely broke down emotionally while in other takes, he acted more stoically. We went with a sterner approach. It simply felt balanced and right.

But as Roman was exiting the plane, he made his way over to his car and walked over to his driver. The two of them exchanged glances before getting into their separate automobiles and driving off. The camera had just landed on the ambulance when the automobiles started to leave. And then, strangely, like at the end of “Ocean’s 11,” all the vehicles and actors left the stage, leaving us with just this empty runway. which was extremely potent.

The moon rising behind Jeremy as he gave a more intimate close-up of his great performance there, however, eventually felt like the right moment to cut to black.

According to HBO, you were the season’s four episode director. How has it been for you, Mark, to part ways with “Succession”?

Oh, I’m really, really, really, really emotional. I’m a commitment addict, so I stuck with “Game of Thrones” for three seasons, “Shameless” for three, and “Entourage” for three. It was quite difficult to say goodbye to this after four seasons because I usually stick with these characters. The way the ambush has kind of unexpectedly hijacked you over the past few of weeks.

Toward the end of the season, there was a day when I could hardly function. I was just so horribly startled and heartbroken. And I’m still trying to understand it. Fortunately, I have post-production comfort to keep me going. But it’s really, really sad.