It wasn't the eulogy that anybody expected, but it was the eulogy that the late Logan Roy deserved. Roman the showman was meant to “light up the sky” with his pitch-perfect tribute of his dad, and not only was he going to win the funeral, but the whole succession thing, too. Then Ewan Roy stepped up to the pulpit.
In an emotionally devastating five minutes, Ewan, played by the Emmy-winning James Cromwell, not only revealed more about Logan’s traumatic upbringing than his immediate family learned in all their time with him, but also didn’t fail to take him to task for his “mean estimation of the world” and the fact that “he has wrought some of the most terrible things” through ATN. There was absolutely no following that. Roman was a crumpled, hysterical mess, and Kendall and Shiv had to pick up his speech with their own, which just weren’t a patch on Ewan’s.
In what will probably end up one of the defining moments of this series, Cromwell has since revealed that not only was he suffering from memory loss from long Covid while filming the scene, but he even managed to nail it all in that one first take.
In an interview with TV Guide he explained: “I was under some pressure, because I'd been having, for the last year, problems with remembering lines. I know the scene perfectly well, I can do it, but the minute I leave it and walk away, it disappears. I thought I was losing my mind and that I would probably be fired. I said to [director] Mark [Mylod], ‘I can't guarantee anything. I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth’. But my assistant and I were discussing it. I said, ‘What should I do? Should I call him and say I can't do it?’ She said, ‘Oh, I think you have long COVID.’ An entire year where I'd had, even in small scenes in films, the same problem.
“But once I started, the thing that really was wonderful was as I stepped up to the podium, I put my cane down and I turned to them and I took out my glasses and I said, ‘Good morning’... So it started to come out of my mouth and it just came out. I did the whole damn thing, I didn't miss a line.”
Speaking on finding empathy for the odious characters on the show, he went on to say: “Yes, they are responsible [for their behaviour] but you must remember, as human beings, we have to have compassion. Those people got stuck in a system, not of their making, but they were encouraged to make it even worse. They're not making anything better. They're only making it worse, and they're stuck, and they know they're stuck, and they suffer like any human being these doubts and the pain and not knowing if anybody cares for them a whit, except for their money.
"So I think Ewan was looking over there and saying, ‘The pain for all of them is quite palpable.’ That's true, regardless of who they are, in the rest of their lives.”
Succession concludes this weekend on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV.
