‘Succession’: Harriet Walter on the Awkward Reunions of Logan’s Funeral

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Succession Season 4, Episode 9, “Church and State.”]

Succession laid Logan Roy (Brian Cox) to rest in the penultimate episode of the show’s fourth and final season, and with his funeral celebration came the resurfacing of his ex-wife, Caroline (Harriet Walter).

Showing up to support her children Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Shiv (Sarah Snook), as well as give her phony husband Peter (Pip Torrens) an opportunity to shmooze senators, Caroline makes a splash at the highly-attended event. Coming face-to-face with her children, she’s immediately shocked to discern that Shiv is expecting a baby, as the women size each other up, you can’t help but wonder what they’re truly thinking.

Thankfully, Walter spoke to TV Insider to help break down the context of these tense interactions among other episode highlights, like filming the funeral sequence with Brian Cox on set, whether Caroline really thinks she should have had dogs instead of children, and the motivation behind her uniting of Logan’s wives and mistresses in the funeral’s front row. Plus, she teases a possible scene from the upcoming finale, below.

(Credit: Macall Polay/HBO)

Whenever you receive a script for the show, do you anticipate a tense scenario such as Logan’s funeral? Caroline never seems to be around when things are calm.

Harriet Walter: That’s an interesting point. There’s usually a wedding or a funeral. There’s only been one season where it wasn’t a wedding or a funeral. That’s sort of normal, isn’t it? For ex-wives. There is that one time when the children come to visit, but it is to try and twist my arm and they’re on a mission from Logan to buy my vote, you know? So it’s not an affectionate visit in that way. I didn’t know Logan had died until I went for my costume fitting and it was all in black, and I said, “oh, so somebody died.” That’s how I found out.

Wow, were you shocked, or were you expecting it?

No, I was shocked. Maybe it was unimaginative of me, but because he nearly died in Season 1 in the pilot, I thought, “oh, this man can never die.” It was very shocking the way that episode where he does [die unfolds]. It was just as surprising as it would’ve been as a character. This is the father of my children, you know, this is somebody who I had a relationship with, and it’s kind of unbelievable because you can’t imagine a world without Logan Roy. And even though she’s been living apart from him, he’s loomed so large in her head all her life, you know?

You’ve witnessed the force of that character as played by Brian Cox. And if you imagine spending time with that person, then of course when they die, it’s going to be an enormous sort of hole in your life. But I felt, where would we be without Brian? How are we gonna soldier on without Brian? So it was a kind of grief in a way. It was a shock and grief parallel.

In that case, did it feel like a real funeral was taking place?

Yes, it did in a strange way. Although on one occasion Brian came and visited [during filming]. But yeah, it felt enormous. Then of course, it’s a vicious circle, isn’t it? Because when something is such a popular show, you have to keep a lot of it under wraps. And so when you’ve got that many extras, they tried to keep it secret from them. And then I think they just realized you can’t because if you’re sitting listening to people’s eulogies, you’re gonna [know what’s going on]. So despite all the efforts to try and keep that low-key and under wraps, it had to come out in the end. But at the same time, I didn’t feel I could go up and down the aisles acting out like I probably would’ve if I was Caroline, sort of greeting everybody and sharing the grief, you know? But it felt like we had to keep our little plan in the know, and be a bit separate from the crowd.

(Credit: HBO)

One of the show’s most memorable lines has to be when Caroline says she should have had dogs instead of children, and in this episode, Caroline realizes Shiv is expecting. What’s going through her mind when they first greet each other in the church?

It’s very hard, isn’t it? Because I think that Caroline’s own parenting was terrible. She didn’t have any affection from her family. And I think it’s true to say that you learn that from infancy. You learn how to show affection, how to trust. I don’t think Caroline trusts anybody with her emotions. She’s gotta be flippant, she’s gotta be glib. Of course she doesn’t mean that. I think the world has taken Caroline on face value much too much. They don’t realize she does a lot of stuff in self-defense because she perceives herself to be under criticism. When she doesn’t appear the next morning for Kendall when he’s in trouble and he wants to talk to her, she doesn’t know what the audience knows, that he’s killed somebody and he is feeling terrible. Caroline doesn’t know that. She thinks, oh God, he’s gonna criticize me and ask me stuff that I don’t wanna know.

If you get close to her in that way, she’ll run a mile. And she’s selfish. Mothers are supposed to be selfless, and they’re supposed to put their children first, and she never learnt that thing. She’s more scared of Shiv than Shiv is of her. Caroline’s way of getting past the things that hurt her is to hurt back. So she’ll say something like, “I should have had dogs,” but she doesn’t mean that, she’s joking.

But deep in our heart, of course, she wishes for her children, she could be a better mother. She wishes her children and her were closer. She wishes she’d made less of a mess of things. It’s impossible to say much on this occasion [about Shiv’s pregnancy]. You’ve sprung this on me and it’s your dad’s funeral, and it would be inappropriate to go into this too much now. You put me at a disadvantage by not telling me, that’s one of Caroline’s reactions. Some of my friends have said they started to understand their mother once they’d had children. So Caroline’s partly thinking, “oh, I’m glad this has hit you, because now you’ll get a bit more of an insight into what it’s like.” Partly she’s thinking, uh-oh, “I’m gonna have to be a good grandmother.” She’s kind of awkward in that moment. And there was a scene, a tiny little scene in Episode 4 not in the final cut where we have a FaceTime conversation and it’s very clear that Shiv is trying to tell her mom that she’s pregnant and she can’t quite do it.

I would’ve loved to have seen that.

It sets it up a bit. And then the other thing is, when you come to play that scene, I don’t think Caroline picked up on what Shiv needed to say because they were talking about Logan’s death. Anyway, there’s so much plot to be tied up when you’re doing Season 4, you can’t put everything in.

Until this point we probably would’ve imagined that Shiv and Caroline haven’t talked since Italy. Especially since Shiv makes that comment about not being sure if she could trust Caroline with news of her pregnancy.

I don’t know because I haven’t seen it, but I think in Episode 10 I did actually say [something]. There’s so much to wrap up, but I did mention there should be some reference to Italy because I think the audience are gonna wanna know how did they get over that one? So we just have a little moment about that. I hope that hasn’t been cut, because I think that’s quite important.

So that’s coming up in the final episode?

Yeah, I hope. It’s just a brief moment. It may be cut, but I think the audience will want to know where did that go? You know? There is a line when she stabbed someone in the back, as you say, where one of the sons says, “oh, mum, he got to you.” So they know that Logan’s the power behind that. It’s not like I came to Logan.

And there is a somewhat sweet moment during the funeral where Caroline brings together all of Logan’s wives and mistresses. What was her motivation there?

I’m glad you picked that up because that is a nice moment. And I think it’s one of the good things that can come out of a funeral is that, as Caroline says, “it’s all water under the bridge now, you know, let’s put things in perspective.” We’ve all suffered something of the same thing because we know this same man. I think it also speaks to some mixed feelings on everybody’s part. Perhaps not Sally Ann so much, because that’s much further in the past, but certainly Kerry (Zoe Winters) and Marcia (Hiam Abbass) are going through stuff and I think Caroline is in a strange way because there’s also the fact if you have children with someone, you never really separate from them. So I think, as I said, this huge giant in her life. She’s reaching out in a certain way, but also making light of it and saying, “come on, he’d love this.”

Succession, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO and Max

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