It will surprise no one familiar with Jeremy Strong's process that he once told Sunday Times interviewer Jonathan Dean that playing Kendall Roy "fucked [him] up." Strong has played other characters that are equally or even more fucked up than Kendall, but never for a sustained period of time like he did over four seasons of Succession. So it's also not a surprise when he says, in his latest Times interview, that he wouldn't want a Succession revival. "It's not something I have any wish to do any longer," he says. "I'm aware it is one of the main chapters of my life, but I don't miss it."
Strong is not by any means ungrateful for the award-winning HBO hit. "That show was an incalculable gift. The material a banquet. So I miss that," he explains, "But Kendall's struggle was difficult to carry for seven years. And there's just so much more I want to do."
Post-Kendall, "I've rediscovered play. I sometimes lost touch with joy," Strong shares. That said, while he does believe that "There’s a place for good old entertainment," don't expect to see him in anything that could be described as "playful" any time soon. He's currently promoting the Donald Trump origin story The Apprentice, which may feature humor but is ultimately a serious subject, especially in an election year. (Strong plays Roy Cohn, a much more formidable villain than Kendall Roy could ever hope to be.) The actor previously argued that it's a "myth that I am this humorless person" in a New York Times Magazine interview earlier this year, though he admitted that having fun is "probably something I'm not great at doing." In Strong's view, "the world is on fire, so I want to hold the mirror up to it," as he says in the Sunday Times. "In this age of increasing noise, AI and digital life, art that has radical honesty is needed more than ever. I want to be part of that."
