If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past few months (or, more likely, you’re a Billions Stan), you’re probably more than aware that the fourth and final season of Succession begins this Sunday – and hopefully brings a whole host of long-awaited ones answers with it. Who will ultimately take over the company? Will Roman finally be able to kiss the tall man of his dreams? And will Tom elucidate and maintain his current position of power? Or fiddle with it, as he’s largely done so far?
Dealing with the latter was a no-brainer even for Tom’s actor Matthew Macfadyen, who – like the rest of us – sometimes tended to mistake Tom’s, well, extreme doormat inclination for utter idiocy. “Jesse [Armstrong, Succession’s creator] will remind Nick [Braun] and I: ‘He runs a multi-billion dollar arm of this company; he’s not a complete idiot,'” Macfadyen said in a recent interview with the New York Times.
The last time we saw our goofy, sneaky Nero, he was trying to comfort his wife after betraying her for Logan and his own interests, even earning credit for the episode’s final, lingering gunshot. But even after this stunning move, Macfadyen doesn’t think Tom’s future is set in stone. “Tom may be at Logan’s camp, but it’s not an easy camp,” he said. “He still doesn’t feel particularly secure and still worries about his relationship with Shiv. And everyone else is still maneuvering and scrabbling and competing.”
But while Tom may have finally thrown his hat in the ring, Macfadyen himself likes to sit back and let everything play around. “I’ve seen actors be very possessive about their ‘journey’ … but I don’t feel like it’s my character — it’s Jesse’s and I’m the channel for it,” he said.
As for his feelings about the show’s ending, something that left his on-screen wife, Sarah Snook, “very upset” and his on-screen father-in-law, Brian Cox, feeling “nothing”?
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“It was a really nice group of actors,” he said. “It’s a weird thing, the grief when you quit a job. It’s kind of awful and heartbreaking, but at the same time there’s a slight relief – a complicated mix of feelings.” Right in the middle –; very on-brand for Tom.
The fourth and final season of Succession premieres Sunday, March 26 at 9pm ET/PT.