Succession Director Compares Latest Episode to a Movie

The final season of Succession delivered a shock just three episodes in, killing off Logan Roy and taking the series in a slightly new direction. The episodes that followed were fairly contained affairs, one taking place at a private wake for Logan and the other at a remote European getaway hosted by the potential new owner of Waystar-Royco. Sunday’s episode, however, pulled back and saw the characters return to the wider world.

Director Lorene Scafaria helmed Sunday’s “Living+,” which saw Kendall and Roman navigating their first big investor meeting without their father. While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Scafaria compared the new episode to a movie, citing its change in scale from the last two episodes.

“Oh, gosh. This was such a treat. It was my third episode on the show. I was lucky enough to do Kendall’s 40th debacle [‘Too Much Birthday’]. I had the daunting joy of doing Logan’s wake [‘Honeymoon States’]. Now, ‘Living+.’ They’re all different,” Scafaria explained. “‘Too Much Birthday’ was like a spectacle, but perfectly contained. ‘Honeymoon States’ was like this intimate ensemble play. When I read ‘Living+,’ it just felt like a movie. All of these episodes focus on the siblings without Dad in the room, though he’s still pulling the strings. And in a way, they’re all very full Kendall arcs, even though all the siblings have so much going on. But yes, the inner grief and how it manifests, I think you see it creeping in the way that grief does. Grief never moves in one direction, especially immediately after. I think they’re all in different stages of grief and they’re all, in a way, running in parallel lines by the end of this episode.”

Not only was this episode a little bigger, but it also took place in Hollywood. With the audiences getting to explore Waystar Studios a little bit, “Living+” was able to really lean in to the movie aesthetics.

“Even though how it appears, we were not in L.A. as much as you’d think. When I read it in the script, it really felt like a movie on the page,” the director added. “And since it was the L.A. episode, I think the approach was to have a little fun with that and lean into it. Certainly there’s enough on the page to mine from. But there are little moments that I wanted to infuse as a person who has lived in L.A. since 2001. I couldn’t help but want to see Roman on a golf cart. This brutally honest person surrounded by all this artifice. I couldn’t help but want to see Kendall at the beach, even though that was something that in the script came and went. And came back, thankfully.”

What did you think of the latest episode of Succession? Let us know in the comments!