Tom Wambsgans was never good enough for Shiv Roy. In Succession, she was the amoral, spoiled but fascinating daughter who hatched furious schemes to rise to power and run her terrible father’s media empire.
Husband Tom has been abandoned, betrayed and taunted but still came back to find out more.
But as we now know, following the conclusion of the hugely successful fourth and final TV series, Tom had his last laugh last month as he managed to outmaneuver his equally vile and selfish rivals, including Shiv’s brothers Kendall and Roman, and make him boss to become the fictional media corporation Waystar Royco.
In the closing scenes of the series, hailed as one of the greatest television dramas of all time, he is triumphantly driven out of the board meeting with a devastated Shiv at his side. Without looking, they hold each other’s hands coldly.
Author Jesse Armstrong describes the gesture as a sign of her newfound “terrifying equality,” which marked the ending of the series.
Billionaire lifestyles, serial cheating and cold-blooded insidiousness aside, it’s a win that British actor Matthew Macfadyen (right), who played Tom, can somewhat identify with. Macfadyen, 48, has been happily married to Keeley Hawes (left) for almost 20 years
Tom Wambsgans (second left) was never good enough for Shiv Roy (first left). In Succession, she was the amoral, spoiled but fascinating daughter who hatched furious schemes to rise to power and run her terrible father’s media empire
How strange fiction can mirror real life.
Billionaire lifestyles, serial scams and cold-blooded insidiousness aside, it’s a win that British actor Matthew Macfadyen, who played Tom, can somewhat identify with.
Macfadyen, 48, has been happily married to Keeley Hawes for almost 20 years.
While she continues to enjoy great success as an actress — starring in hit TV shows like Spooks, Bodyguard, Line Of Duty, and The Durrells — for years everyone assumed it was Keeley who did it would make the big break in Hollywood.
“The successor has brought Matthew Macfadyen to the attention of Hollywood’s most important casting directors,” Ben Dalton, international reporter at influential film and television magazine Screen International, told the Chron this week.
“His rise is on par with Tom Wambsgans – although Macfadyen’s is far more graceful!”
His career-defining performance — not to mention his convincing Midwest American accent — not only earned Macfadyen rave reviews and a legion of new fans, but also allowed him to surprise even his friends with his meteoric rise to Tinsel Town.
“Despite my high expectations, I wasn’t prepared for his appearance on Succession,” recently observed Colin Firth, himself an actor once notable for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy.
“I can’t see him anywhere in it and I don’t know where it’s coming from.” “I don’t know if any actor has ever surprised me like that.”
The New York Times was equally stunned: “Couldn’t there be a more insufferably awkward TV character than Tom Wambsgans?” Played by British actor Matthew Macfadyen, Tom is played with understated comic glee while also managing to exist at all points on the show’s power spectrum: bullied, bullied and hovering helplessly in between.”
This point was echoed by Sarah Snook, his on-screen wife Shiv: “I don’t know how he managed to make such a submissive and tyrannical character sympathetic, but he did it.”
“He’s one of those actors who has so much love, empathy, compassion and curiosity about the world that he can really give a character anything he wants.”
“The successor has brought Matthew Macfadyen to the attention of Hollywood’s most important casting directors,” Ben Dalton, international reporter at influential film and television magazine Screen International, told the Chron this week
Macfadyen’s performance as Wambsgans earned him the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor last September, with bookies naming him a favorite to repeat that performance this year. Nominations will be made in July.
And parade roles followed. He is set to star alongside Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in the acclaimed Marvel superhero film Deadpool 3, and recently wrapped up filming on the Hitchcockian thriller Holland, Michigan, starring Nicole Kidman.
Macfadyen plays her husband in the cat-and-mouse story about a teacher who begins an affair, only to find out that her husband is leading a double life himself.
Of course, there’s no hint of professional jealousy between Matthew and Keeley. “I couldn’t be more proud of my amazing, talented, kind and brilliant husband,” she wrote on Instagram last year when her husband accepted his Emmy.
Everyone thought it was Keeley who would break into Hollywood
In fact, they couldn’t be more different as husband and wife than Tom and Shiv. Far from traveling the world in private jets plotting his wife’s demise in the process, Macfadyen was recently spotted jogging on the streets of London with his dog Buster, a chestnut poodle.
Despite his filming commitments in the US, he continues to live in the UK and insists he and his wife adhere to a strict “three-week rule”, meaning they will never be apart for much longer.
Though far from belonging to the incredibly wealthy Roys family, they are nonetheless enjoying the fruits of their success.
After Macfadyen reportedly made more than $300,000 per episode for the final ten-episode of Succession, he and Hawes leisurely climbed the real estate ladder, with a shared keen eye for a “maker-upper,” making millions along the way.
They began married life in a ‘cottage’ in Twickenham, which they sold in 2008 for a profit of £250,000. Her second home was a Victorian estate that was bought for £2.1million and sold for £3.25million.
A third house followed, which was sold last summer after extensive renovations. As the Chron reported earlier this week, the couple had restored the six-bedroom family home to its original appearance by removing “architecturally messy” additions.
Macfadyen’s performance as Wambsgans earned him the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor last September, with bookies naming him a favorite to repeat that performance this year. Nominations will be made in July
The work paid off: the house sold for £3.5million – £1.25million more than they paid for it.
The family have now moved to Chelsea and bought a £3.95million four-storey terraced house.
Acting is in Macfadyen’s blood. He was born in Great Yarmouth and his mother was an actress and drama teacher and the two appeared in amateur productions together.
His father worked in the oil industry which meant the family moved frequently both in the UK and abroad. Macfadyen went to Oakham School in Rutland as a boarding school, where tuition is now £43,000 a year.
Such was his theatrical talent that at the age of 17 he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
At the age of 21 he joined the acclaimed touring company Cheek by Jowl, where he starred in the Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi.
Several roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company followed, with Macfayden saying he fully expects to pursue a career in theater.
But in 1998, when he was 24, he made his big screen debut in an adaptation of Wuthering Heights, in which he played the role of Hareton Earnshaw. In 2002 he was cast in the BBC television series Spooks.
There he saw his future wife for the first time, who at the time still had the confetti from her first marriage in her hair.
Keeley, the daughter of a taxi driver who grew up in London council flats, caught the acting bug at a young age.
At age nine, she persuaded her parents to pay the fees to attend the Sylvia Young Theater School. Classmates including Denise Van Outen and Emma Bunton remember her for her talent, drive and ambition.
But when she left, she spent a few years drifting and earning a living as a model before finding success on television, first in Dennis Potter’s ‘Karaoke’ in 1996 and then in the controversial lesbian drama ‘Tipping The Velvet “.
And parade roles followed. He is slated to star alongside Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in the high-profile Marvel superhero film Deadpool 3, and recently wrapped up filming on the Hitchcockian thriller Holland, Michigan, starring Nicole Kidman (pictured: Macfayden in “Death at a Funeral”).
In December 2001 she married cartoonist Spencer McCallum and the couple now had a young son, Myles. Their honeymoon consisted of two days in Amsterdam, after which the 25-year-old bride returned to London to continue filming on BBC drama Spooks.
Her co-star Macfadyen was waiting for her. Apparently, they fell in love “like a ton of bricks” on set.
Filming began in November, a month before their wedding; Keeley insists the pair only got together when she left McCallum in February. “Matthew just came right out with it one day and said ‘I love you’ in the rain,” Keeley said recently. “I was like, ‘Oh dear, let’s go’.”
Their marriage ended after just eight weeks. As she later explained, there was “no point” in staying in a loveless connection.
“You never know what’s coming up and I think things are either right or they aren’t, and they weren’t right,” she said.
Matthew and Keeley married two years later in 2004 and have two children – Maggie, now 18, and Ralph, 16.
Despite the circumstances of their split, the split between Keeley and her first husband was anything but acrimonious. According to Macfadyen, they’ve all become good friends. “It was a bit bumpy back then, but it’s okay now,” he said.
After the success of “Spooks,” the newlywed couple’s careers continued to flourish. In 2005, Macfadyen starred in Pride and Prejudice.
The studio put him on a special diet and had a personal trainer get him into the sleek Darcy style, complete with skinny pants and sideburns. “I didn’t feel particularly Mr. Darcy-y,” he says now. “I felt a bit like a middle-aged dad.”
Other roles followed and a recent project has seen him play the ‘coughing Major’ in the ITV drama series Quiz about Major Charles Ingram, who was found guilty of cheating on the top prize on the TV game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? ?
His last major film role was in the John Madden-directed World War II drama Operation Mincemeat opposite Colin Firth.
When it came to casting Succession, British creator Jesse Armstrong was familiar with Macfadyen’s work.
“He’s known in the UK for being able to play all sorts of roles, although most people wouldn’t necessarily know him as a comic actor,” said Armstrong.
While his character initially played a relatively minor role, he continued to develop as the series progressed.
As for Keeley, she’s rarely been away from television over the past two decades, including roles on the series Finding Alice and It’s a Sin.
She started her own company, Buddy Club Productions, with a determination to “put diversity and gender equality at the core of everything we do”.
Also, she and her husband recently got back together for the first time since Spooks. In “Stonehouse,” Macfadyen stars as the dramatized story of disgraced Secretary of Labor John Stonehouse, who faked his own death in 1974. Macfadyen played Stonehouse himself, with Keeley as his wife, Barbara.
Despite Macfayden’s increased notoriety, friends say the couple remains as grounded as ever.
They fell in love “like a ton of bricks” on the Spooks set.
Keeley has described himself as a 10 p.m. person who likes to spend nights with family in front of the Gogglebox or scrolling through interior design pages on Instagram.
“They’re both nice, easy-going people,” says a friend. “They don’t really have a social audience that shines.” They’re close to some writers and TV execs, but too family-oriented to go out much.”
In the last few weeks they have made the most of the early summer, visiting the Chelsea Flower Show together and vacationing in Italy.
Photos posted to Keeley’s Instagram show them sightseeing in Florence and relaxing on a motor launch hurtling across Lake Como.
For some, however, Macfadyen will always be fondly remembered as Mr. Darcy.
Indeed, among the pickles, fruitcakes and soaps in the gift shop at Chatsworth House, where most of Pride and Prejudice was filmed, you’ll still find replica busts of the actor from the time – yours for £75.
Tom Wambsgans would no doubt be flattered.