He may have been Logan Roy’s ‘Number One Boy’ but according to Jeremy Strong, playing Kendall Roy for four seasons of Succession caused him to “lose touch with joy.”
And although the actor took home both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the tortured eldest Roy sibling, in a recent interview with The Times Jeremy revealed how the role ‘fucked me up.’
When asked about a Succession revival or a spin-off series with Kendall Roy, he said: “It’s not something I have any wish to do any longer.
“I’m aware it is one of the main chapters of my life, but I don’t miss it.”
Since finishing up on the satirical black comedy-drama television series Jeremy shared how he has “rediscovered play” as he “sometimes lost touch with joy” while playing Kendall.
This is perhaps unsurprising given that following the Succession finale, Jeremy revealed that Kendall almost had a much darker ending to his story.
Known for his style of method acting, Jeremy shared that he had attempted to jump into a river while filming Kendall’s final scene.
At the time, in an interview with Vanity Fair, he explained “The water was calling to me. I tried to go into the water after we cut – I got up from that bench and went as fast as I could over the barrier and on to the pilings, and the actor playing Colin raced over.
“I didn’t know I was gonna do that, and he didn’t know, but he raced over and stopped me. I don’t know whether in that moment I felt that Kendall just wanted to die – I think he did – or if he wanted to be saved by essentially a proxy of his father.”
However, Jeremy is far from ungrateful when it comes to his time on the show.
“That show was an incalculable gift. The material a banquet. So I miss that. But Kendall’s struggle was difficult to carry for seven years,” he told The Times.
“And there’s just so much more I want to do.”
Jeremy Strong stars alongside Sebastian Stan in Ali Abbasi’s new movie The Apprentice, which centres around Trump in the 1970s and 80s.
The Apprentice is due to hit UK cinemas on Friday 18 October.