“I feel like I came to some crazy memorial service or something,” Sarah Snook admitted as Succession premiered its fourth and final season in New York on Monday night. “It’s the beginning of the end, but there’s a lot of celebration and a lot of sadness because this is the last time we do this, but also happiness because we love each other.”
Emotions seemed to be quite mixed for everyone as stars Brian Cox, Snook, Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Matthew Macfadyen, Nicholas Braun, Alan Ruck, J. Smith-Cameron and creator Jesse Armstrong walked the carpet at Lincoln Center , while Armstrong himself told , “I’m really sad not to do it again and I’m slightly hopeful that we’ve had a good season to do the show justice.”
Braun went even further, promising: “It’s a very good season, it’s maybe our best season, so I feel like we’re going to start with a bang and I think people will be happy. I loved doing it and I think people will love it.”
The shocking news that the HBO hit was coming to an end so soon was made public just three weeks ago, and while the team has had more time to process it, it hasn’t dawned on many of them that it isn’t will be returning to the world of the Roys.
“It didn’t really hit me,” said Armstrong, who revealed he’s still editing the final episodes of the series. “It’ll be once we’re really done and I’ve turned in the last episode, and maybe when it airs then I think it’s going to be really, really hard to be like, ‘Oh wow, that’s it over.'”
While Braun noted that saying goodbye to Armstrong (who “really changed all of our lives”) and the crew was an emotional process, and Smith-Cameron teased that frequent scene partner Culkin was her hardest goodbye (“I mean, he’s a terrible rat , but I love him and loved working with him”), Cox was one star who seemed happy to finish Succession, saying, “I’m really pleased. I love endings so it’s good, I feel good.”
“Doing the scenes with Jeremy was a really great experience, it’s a wonderful actor to work with in that way. That relationship was very powerful and writing was also very powerful. We both had a blast working together, it was amazing,” Cox continued to collaborate with his screen kids, including Strong, who spoke about his acting process in a cover with THR between seasons. “I’ve had a great time working with the whole family – Sarah and the relationship with Siobhan; The acknowledgment of Roman’s character throughout the series was really interesting and interesting how smart Roman is, but he also lets himself down by sending dick pics to people, which doesn’t really help.”
Another big talk on the carpet was that of possible spinoffs, and while Cox admitted he doubts Armstrong would do another show about any of the characters, he joked, ‘I suppose Greg really would be the natural spinoff,’ the life of an idiot’ ‘ would be an interesting thing – a big idiot at that.
Snook had similar thoughts, suggesting, “Tom and Greg, kind of a half-hour comedy that sets up the main office in Vancouver, a Canadian outpost,” although Braun said, “You’d have to drop Tom and Greg into a weird world, let them.” drop them in the Philippines or something, drop them in some crazy weird micro-business world that we never saw on the show. This is the way.”
Armstrong also confirmed “some movement for an ‘Oh Hugo’ spinoff about Hugo Baker [played by Fisher Stevens]The [Waystar Royco] Vice President of Communications, who lives with his daughter again. We like that this would be a good sitcom that we could have done.”
As for the current show, however, Ruck gave a taste of what’s to come in the final episode: “Nothing is tied to a loop for anybody. I can tell you it’s a satisfying ending, but it’s a bit more like life, like you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen to some people. So it’s really satisfying, it’s perfect.”
The fourth season of Succession premieres Sunday on HBO.
Neha Joy contributed to this story.