Mark Mylod is developing something of a reputation for completely nailing the last shot of a season of “Succession.” When we last spoke, Mylod had Logan Roy (Brian Cox) react with a devilish smile at the end of season two. Mylod was rewarded for his work on that episode with a DGA award. And, once again, this past March, he won another DGA Award for the season three finale, “All The Bells Say.” At this point, the director and executive producer of the HBO series probably deserves an individual Emmy win for his helming accomplishments. Especially when you have viewers comparing his work in the season three finale to a Caravaggio painting.
READ MORE: Sarah Snook breaks down the masterful final scene of “Succession” Season 3
In a moving scene somewhat in the middle of the episode, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) reveals to his sister Shiv (Sarah Snook) and brother Roman (Kiernan Culkin) that he accidentally killed someone at Shiv’s wedding a few years earlier. As he breaks down, both Roman and Shiv put their hands on their estranged brother, allowing them some veiled sort of reconciliation after Kendall spent months trying to wrestle the family company out of their father’s control. That moment was harkened by some to resemble a painting by the classic Italian painter (fitting since the scene was shot in Italy), and Mylod humbly admitted that’s a very nice comparison.
“The image was specific. Part of the choosing of the location was walking down that lane and seeing that graphic perspective,” Mylod says. “And knowing that a lot of the power of the scene, some of the power of the scene, is in the stillness and the change of energy. Again, just the emotional colors and the flow of the episode, there was a stillness to that and a pause and a silence and a quietness to it. And it just came from there. When you stand there, you just think, ‘Okay, if this character ends up here and this character comes to him, and that other character is receding in the same shot to pick up the phone call…’ So, you’ve got all these layers happening on this kind of triangulation, and you’ve got that graphic of the architecture behind; it just fell into a low-angle wide shot. It just fell in that way in my head.”
During our conversation earlier this month, Mylod also dissected the shocking final scene (which was partially improvised by the actors) and teased his new feature film, “The Menu,” starring Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hoult, and Anya Taylor-Joy.
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The Playlist: You guys were supposed to shoot season three. The pandemic happens, and you had over a year delay. As an artist and filmmaker, did you worry at all that you guys might have too much time to think about how you’d shoot it?
Mark Mylod: Yeah, constantly. I’m paranoid by nature. The fear was not so much that. It wasn’t some impatience. I suppose, as a director, because we had this great arc, a great season to shoot. But with my producer hat on, honestly, at that time, going back to 2020, when it was really, and obviously a dark time for us all, the foreground was much more about what’s safe and how can we get everybody together safely. And really, and that whole period from when we stopped production in March 2020 through to when we eventually got going again around Thanksgiving of that year, it didn’t really feel like downtime because we as producers and the team were on Zooms pretty much constantly just updating and sharing information with other producers, quite literally all over the world, of everybody’s process and experience. And there was this beautiful think tank going on globally, that this whole network of how can we get back to work safely. So, that became the foreground, and it put the creative somewhat on the back burner until we could get going.
Jesse and the writers have always been very tapped into what’s going on in the moment. Were you at all worried that you were going to miss the moment because the story is based on a time before the pandemic?
Totally. Having had that sense of being part of the zeitgeist in season two when it was airing and that lovely feeling of connection with the audience. I was really scared that our moment would pass, that society would accelerate evolution culturally because of the pandemic. Yeah, I was really worried that we wouldn’t connect, that we would feel oddly kind of pre-pandemic in the way that one can feel Pre-Trumpian or something, I suppose. So, there was that, yeah, very real fear of that. And there was nothing we could do about that. We’d already made the choice that COVID would not really exist in the show, which was a tricky choice to make, but that was the choice we made. Ultimately, one can hopefully contribute to the cultural zeitgeist, but you can’t control it or tap it. It’s that lightning in a bottle thing that happens with a hit show, isn’t it?
Absolutely. The show’s so Shakespearean and about corporate culture in general. I can only hope; I’m praying that there will be no crypto or NFTs in season four.
I can’t guarantee you that, no. Sorry. [Laughs.]
You can’t say, but I’m hoping! The final episode of the season which you directed is so spectacular. When you got the script, did you realize that you had something potentially special you needed to deliver?
Yeah, completely. The actual script landing is always a gorgeous thing when you’ve got a script written by Jesse Armstrong. And genuinely, I worked my whole career to be in a position where I could get scripts like that landing on my desk. So yeah, that sense of anticipation and just elation. And followed very swiftly by, “Oh my God, I hope I don’t f**k it up.” Always. In this instance, our scripts come in late, but that’s the way Jesse works. But we know right at the start of the season, we’re talking, and the writer’s room kind of breaks up, and then I’m talking with Jesse and the rest of the team, and we know exactly what the arc of each episode is. Then we have the building blocks, and then that becomes a working script, and that evolves through drafts in a classic way. So, from the start of the season way back, we knew exactly where we were ending up. I don’t believe the writing process worked backward from this, but we knew we were going to work towards Tom’s betrayal, and of course, Logan having outfoxed his kids along with [his ex-wife] Caroline over the prenuptial agreement that was going to thwart their attempt to block the takeover. So, we had those two building blocks. We knew that there was going to be this confession and a coming together of Kendall with Roman and Shiv. We actually went off to Italy to scout locations, in an odd but not unfamiliar situation of not knowing if we’d actually be able to shoot there or not because of COVID. So, we were simultaneously prepping a North American version of the final two episodes as well, which was odd and unsatisfying. And I suppose my biggest palpable relief that I remember from that time, was when we got the all-clear to actually shoot in Italy where I’d found these various locations where I knew everything pieced together.
And in terms of the emotional colors of the last two episodes, I could just feel the flow of it through the locations. And it just all fell into place. And when I had that feeling, I know that I’m in a good place directorially. And then when the script landed on top of that? Then it just became excitement. And trepidation, obviously, because trying to evolve to that intensity that was needed throughout those episodes, particularly episode nine, and particularly those last few scenes, obviously, there’s always a fear that you’re not going to deliver what the script deserves. It is always, so far, usually unfounded because they genuinely are, as you know, a phenomenal cast with so much intelligence and talent. And we have a genuinely phenomenal crew who are incredibly motivated and tapped into the nuance and the specific frequency of our storytelling. So, when you’ve got all that support around you, I’d have to be a genuine idiot to mess it up completely. But there’s always that fear.
In the ninth episode, did the script specifically say, Shiv, Roman, and Kendall walk down this dirt road behind the garage? Or were you there that day and said, “Okay, I think they’re going to come over here; let’s do this scene right.” How did that staging work itself out?
Combination of both, really. Jesse and I have an ongoing joke. Ever since season one, when we went off to do Shiv and Tom’s wedding in Eastnor Castle in England, Jesse always wants to see the underbelly. We’re always, as a show, looking for those opportunities to juxtapose the wealth with normal people’s lives, and we’re not going to fetishize the wealth all the time. So, basically, the catchphrases become, “Where are the trash cans?” Basically, “Where are the rubbish cans?” We are used to seeing these characters in places of beauty and of wealth. And there’s an authenticity to some of the biggest emotional events in our life not happening in those perfectly staged places, happening in the crappy places. In the truck stop where, in season two, Logan had to take that humiliating FaceTime call, from one of the key investors. And it’s not where he wants to be, he wants to be in a nice power office, comfortable and with this status intact. But reality doesn’t reflect that.
And to answer your question directly, I believe the script said something to the effect of “A crappy place,” or Jesse’s more eloquent version of that. And that particular dusty lane presented itself as just the perfect visual antidote to the verdant gorgeous wedding happening just around the corner. And then we brought in the literal trash cans which gave us a lovely opportunity to lay a little helpful booby trap for Jeremy’s character when we had the serving staff coming out to dump the food waste into the trash. And we didn’t tell him that was going to happen, hoping that was going to help stimulate him into that breakdown, and he bit into that beautifully. But yeah, the script was quite specific that it shouldn’t be a nice place. It was a kind of backstage area.
There is a moment in that scene of Kendall sitting on the ground and Shiv and Roman putting their hands sort of on him. People have described it – this is their words – like a Caravaggio painting. Was that an intended image that you went for?
Well, working backwards, obviously, it’s lovely and incredibly complimentary. I’ve never been compared to Caravaggio before, so that was a nice experience. It’s a really difficult question to answer without sounding really pretentious, but…yes, it was. The image was specific. Part of the choosing of the location was walking down that lane and seeing that graphic perspective. And knowing that a lot of the power of the scene, some of the power of the scene, is in the stillness and the change of energy. Again, just the emotional colors and the flow of the episode, there was a stillness to that and a pause and a silence and a quietness to it. And it just came from there. When you stand there and then you just think, “Okay, if this character ends up here and this character comes to him and that other character is receding in the same shot in order to pick up the phone call…” So, you’ve got all these layers happening on this kind of triangulation, and you’ve got that graphic of the architecture behind, it just fell into a low-angle wide shot. It just fell in that way in my head. But then as soon as I see something on this show that I think, “Okay, that’s a beautiful image,” I disguise the journey to it. Because the actors, nobody on the show wants to feel contrivance [or] wants to feel that they’re being pushed inorganically into a place. I’m not saying this is all great cunning subterfuge on my part. That’s why I find it difficult to explain, genuinely. Because it’s not, it’s just the dance I do with the cast, with the writing. I wanted them to end up in a particular place in this harsh, overhead sun, in this dusty bowl with that architecture behind them. But I never once said, “Please be right there, and then you touch at this point, and then you be there.” They found that themselves. And I put the ingredients and we talk it through. And it’s an evolving process. And it was many takes before we got to that particular place, in my head, perfect connectivity stroke disconnect between them because our version of a group hug for the Roy family was exactly that. It was incredible tenderness of the touch from Roman, which was a really beautiful instinct, I think, from Kieran. And that unleashed Jeremy. And then that fantastically smart choice from Sarah with the touch, but also looking at the phone. So, I get as far as, “Okay, I’ve got this very still frame which I can’t often have where a lot of it can play in that frame.”
The final shot of the season is a stunner, and I hope Sarah gets an Emmy just for that.
Me too.
She’s incredible in it. But both Sarah and Matthew have told me, and correct me if I’m wrong, that in that scene, in particular, you basically let them block it out themselves in terms of what was going on. So, were you hoping that it would end up in that sort of image? Were you unsure of what the last shot would be?
I thought that the last image would happen 30 seconds before that. I thought that the last image would be exactly as was scripted, which was that with the three siblings completely isolated and that sea of sharks, and having been so defeated by their father and their mother, that the final coup de grâce would be… And I’d chosen this location with the door, the double doors, where one door could just open the right amount when Logan went out so that Sarah could have that sight line through to that moment with the touch on the shoulder from Logan to Tom, and thereby perceive the betrayal. And I thought that that moment, the look on her face, would be it. But as it happened, and when I imagined the cut to black there, it felt too glib. It felt almost kind of soap opera-esque. Not because of the performance, just because of the timing of the cut to black. The performance was brilliant. It just felt too “Da, da, da.” So, as we always do, we work in the moment. And I never say cut when the scripts end; we just keep going, either until the film roll runs out or until the moment runs out. And so Matthew continued to come into the room, and then they would meet in the center of that room.
But there still wasn’t a final moment. I couldn’t feel the cut to black. So, I think on one take, I suggested that Sarah break away from the rest of the group. And Matthew then followed her. So, I brought her towards the camera, and with an instinct to focus in on that moment, basically getting into that close two-shot, and then that take just happened late on a Friday night. And I just remember really, very clearly thinking, “That’s it. Because there was that, to me, perfect moment.” That sounds a little horrible in print. It’s going to sound self-aggrandizing. To me, this gorgeous moment of Sarah is towards the lens so we can see her voyeuristically when Tom cannot. And that was the key to it. That’s what I couldn’t, I suppose, unconsciously was trying to get to was a contrast, an experience where his foe, concern and tenderness, and her trying to do exactly what Roy would do in that situation. Even in the deepest despair and rage at that betrayal, I would still somehow put a game face on and say, “Yep, I’m fine,” but our eyes are doing something else. And that was so beautifully complex emotionally from Sarah at that point that then in my head, I know we can cut to black there, and then the tone will be thick, and that’s what we needed.
Nicholas told me he thought that that was one of Brian Cox’s best scenes in the entire series because it was just so unexpected. But just to clarify again, when you guys are doing those scenes, there was no real rehearsal, right? You just sort of block it out and shoot it that day.
We don’t rehearse in the way that other productions rehearse. We’re kind of obsessed with authenticity. Every show is, but we think there’s a virtue in the messiness. A big influence, for me directorially, is Robert Altman. And particularly “Gosford Park,” which deals with some of the same themes that we do in its own way. And that messiness of Altman’s style. It’s not documentary, but it’s the camera trying to keep up with events. And often we find that by not talking too much about it, initially, just going with instinct, with instinct from everybody, you launch into this scene which is so beautifully written so that you’ve already got this great launch pad. And you want to get into it. You don’t want to waste spontaneity on a rehearsal and then be trying to recapture that.
I totally understand. You also have “The Menu” coming out this fall. It’s clearly a different project but also another ensemble project.
Yeah.
Did you want to bring any of that sort of messiness to “The Menu”? Or did you want to put a different stamp on it aesthetically?
It’s a very different stamp aesthetically. It’s much more kind of classical in the shot construction. It’s not as handheld. So, it does have a very different rhythm and aesthetic. But in terms of the way of working with the actors, very, very similar. It was more specific on the lighting. So, we would rehearse in terms of positions for that, because the lighting was much more specific, and it wasn’t photo-realism element to it. There had to be a high aesthetic because what we’re trying to satirize the world, we’re trying to satirize in “The Menu.” But that way of working with that ensemble, of that freedom to improvise, that freedom to explore the characters thoroughly, and to work together to build the scene, that’s just my way of working. As I say, it’s ripping off one of the great directors of American cinema, but I love that way of working.
“Succession” is available on HBO Max.