As HBO’s acclaimed satire Succession enters its fourth and final season this week, fans will be wondering, “How will this all end?” The tale of Machiavellian media mogul Logan Roy, played so menacingly by Brian Cox, and his power-hungry children is a must-read for anyone interested in the machinations of high-profile billionaires and their damaged families.
Said to be inspired by the dramas of media dynasties like the Murdochs and the Redstones, Succession has rightly been acclaimed for its biting wit and wild characters. What has been more overlooked, however, is that the show’s creators, led by Brit Jesse Armstrong, envisioned a believable world of super-rich creators by downscaling the action from the operatic demeanor of their real-world counterparts.
The usual rule in satire is to exaggerate reality, but the narrative threads of the Murdochs and Redstone families over the years meant that dramatic amplification wasn’t really a viable option.
In the sequel Logan Roy is a King Lear-like character who pits her descendants against each other for the prize of taking over the multimedia family business Waystar Royco. He is ruthless, cunning, full of intrigue and ready to lie at any moment to protect his wealth. In other words, a standard personality for a billionaire businessman. But he has only been married three times, once to a cold-blooded aristocrat and most recently to an understated, middle-aged Lebanese woman.
Last week Rupert Murdoch announced his fifth marriage to 66-year-old Ann Lesley Smith, a former model, Christian minister for a police agency and widow of a country and western singer. They are, said 92-year-old Murdoch, “both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together.” It’s not clear if he was joking or is the beneficiary of an undisclosed cryogenic process.
The announcement comes less than 18 months after his divorce from Jerry Hall, also a former model, albeit a slightly better known one, and former wife of accomplished rock star Mick Jagger. Marriage to Hall followed Murdoch’s divorce from Wendi Deng (38 years his junior), who was believed by some in the Murdoch family to be a Chinese intelligence operative after he suspected she was having an affair with former Prime Minister Tony Blair ( which both have denied). ).
Try presenting this storyline in a writers’ room meeting and see if anyone would swallow it.
But Murdoch was a Trappist monk compared to the late Sumner Redstone, who controlled billionaire media conglomerate ViacomCBS until his death in 2020. Redstone was only married twice, but he was obsessed with sex well into his ’90s, wasting money on a string of much younger women.
According to a court testimony from one of them, although the old man was connected to a feeding tube and catheter, she performed sexual acts on him under the careful guidance of his carer.
Now there’s no question that Succession has featured some weird scenes. For example, who can forget Roy’s son-in-law Tom Wambsgans’ unusual sex act at his lavish bachelor party? And the honking spectacle of the Boar on the Floor game was as bizarre as it was disturbing. Still, neither comes close to the geriatric debauchery that took place with medical staff at Redstone’s Beverly Park mansion.
For a time, it looked like Redstone would leave all his money to the two much younger women he lived with at the mansion — Sydney Holland and Manuela Herzer. Multilingual, Herzer is of Argentinian descent and was introduced to Redstone by the late film producer Robert Evans. Holland met Redstone through Patti Stanger, the host of a dating show called Millionaire Matchmaker, after Holland’s former lover died of “cocaine poisoning” while they were having sex, according to a new book about Redstone.
Try to imagine the feverish inspiration it takes for a screenwriter to dream up this extraordinary scenario, and the showrunner’s inevitable judgment that the audience would be unable to suspend disbelief. That’s the unfair advantage the billionaire lifestyle has over even the cleverest attempts to perpetuate it.
For several years, Redstone was determined to leave his billions to Holland and Herzer rather than to his two children — particularly his ambitious daughter Shari. Instead, Redstone discovered that Holland was conducting a secret affair with a talkative ex-con and former actor named George Pilgrim, whom she had housed in an Arizona home she had bought with Redstone’s money. She flew back and forth to her lover’s on a private jet, making sure she was at Redstone’s in time for bed each night.
Sumner Redstone, left, with his right hand Les Moonves. Photo: Graham Whitby Boot/AllstarThe equally blind pilgrim only found out that his wealthy girlfriend was also Redstone’s girlfriend when he read about it in an article in Vanity Fair. The resulting fallout and Holland’s failure to ensure Pilgrim’s silence resulted in her exclusion from Redstone’s life and will. In the end, Holland and Herzer only had to contend with the $140 million Redstone gave them before they fell out of favor. Again, Succession’s screenwriters would have to dismiss such material as too melodramatic for the series’ scathing intentions.
Even the scandal rocking Waystar Royco in Succession is arguably less shocking than the scandals that have plagued some well-known billionaires. In the fictional version, the company’s cruise division, led by Lester McClintock (known as Mo Lester), is caught covering up a series of sexual assaults and possibly even murder.
Inevitably, the still lingering crimes and abuses of Jeffrey Epstein come to mind, but both Murdoch and Redstone also had to reckon with foul skeletons hidden in their corporate closets. In 2011, Murdoch was forced to shut down the News of the World newspaper after widespread phone hacking allegations culminated in the revelation that a private investigator working for the newspaper had tapped the voicemail of murdered teenage girl Milly Dowler. Andy Coulson, the newspaper’s former editor, who later became Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications director, was jailed for authorizing phone hacking, and Coulson’s ex-lover Rebekah Brooks, something of a surrogate for Murdoch, who he had appointed head of News International, was found not guilty of the same charges.
The bad publicity was thwarted by Murdoch’s plans to disband Ofcom – the quid pro quo, it is said, to get the Sun newspaper to support David Cameron in the 2010 election – so he could take full control of Sky TV. Similarly, the allegations against the cruise ship in Succession have dashed Roy’s attempts to expand his business.
Five years later, the Murdochs were preparing for another Sky takeover attempt when allegations of sexual harassment were made against Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.
As the allegations mounted, Ailes was forced to resign. But any sense that Murdoch had acted quickly was undermined the following year when it was revealed Fox had paid millions of dollars to silence sexual harassment complaints against the network’s star presenter, Bill O’Reilly. Although the Murdochs hastily ousted O’Reilly, Sky’s offering was again badly damaged.
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Also in 2018, Redstone’s right-hand man, Leslie Moonves, resigned as CBS chief executive after making allegations of sexual assault and abuse, which he had denied. And that same year, the Competition and Markets Authority not only ruled against Murdoch’s bid for Sky, but also banned any member of the Murdoch family from working for the company again. Ironically, Succession is broadcast on Sky in the UK.
In a way, all of these scandals are mere historical footnotes when contrasted with what is arguably Murdoch’s most egregiously reckless act – the creation of Donald Trump. Without first Murdoch’s own New York Post and later Fox News, Trump might still be just a narcissistic Queens real estate developer with a bad haircut.
But it was Murdoch’s media power that helped transform the man he allegedly called a “damn idiot” into arguably the most dysfunctional president in United States history, reshaping the American political landscape into one of culturally ingrained hostility. It’s a legacy Murdoch’s second son James should be ashamed of and his eldest son Lachlan seems to thrive in.
As the title suggests, Succession is most obviously about the struggle to succeed the ruthless patriarch. It’s essentially a three-way battle, with Kendall, Shiv, and Roman trying to thwart and humiliate each other while attempting to take control.
With the Murdochs, the main fight was between James and Lachlan, despite occasional interest from Elizabeth. First, Lachlan, the elder son, said to be more righteous than his father, was the chosen heir. But being hot-tempered and uncompromising, he fell out with key executives and left the family business with a £100million payout.
‘Ambitious’ Shari Redstone in 2019. Photo: Mike Blake/PortalA modernizer, relatively liberal and moderate-voiced, James was on the rise at the time and, like Kendall in season one, looked like he was being groomed to take the helm. But Lachlan, who shotgunned kangaroos as a young man, seemed to remain his father’s favorite and he returned to the herd in 2015.
Just as Logan tried to use Kendall as a case giver for the cruise ship scandal, James was blamed for the failed Sky bid, not least by Lachlan, whom Murdoch effectively made his brother’s boss. The de facto demotion prompted James to walk out of a lunch and fly to Indonesia, just as one does when money is absolutely no object.
Like Kendall, he believed he spent years of his life supporting his father while Lachlan was spearfishing and doing bad business in Australia. And like Kendall, he’s right, although the far more glaring injustice is the belief that the most suitable leader of a multibillion-dollar company will come from the owner’s tiny gene pool.
Perhaps Murdoch, who never seemed to be much of a proponent of inheritance elsewhere, saw the folly of his ways. In any event, he sold his Sky stock and controlling interest in 20th Century Fox in a deal that pocketed $4 billion, taking his net worth to $18 billion and raising $2 billion each of his six children.
So, along with the Times, he and his heirs are left with Fox News and The Sun, the two institutions that have done most to spread Murdoch’s illiberal vision, and more money than they can ever spend. This is unlikely to be the Roys’ breakup. You can have peace of mind knowing that for once they will almost certainly reach a more dramatic climax than the real-life competition.
From left: Lachlan, James, Anna, Elisabeth and Rupert Murdoch. Photo: SIPA/REX/Shutterstock