The backstories

Aside from the show’s writing staff, the show’s long-arc story plotting uses a handful of media experts who lend the show their insider knowledge of the business and the families that rule it, Armstrong reveals. They are Wall Street Journal writer Merissa Marr, business writer William Cohan and media executive Jon Klein.

“We have the landscape in our heads, but we couldn’t write it without the knowledge of the media and business landscape,” Armstrong says. For many of the show’s twists and turns, as the family battle for control of Waystar RoyCo, “you can get these rather byzantine processes,” Armstrong says. “They help us get all that detail right. And knowing that we have them gives us the confidence the business stuff that we portray [is accurate].”

The set and locations

Unlike many hour-long scripted American dramas, Succession has very few standing sets,” Armstrong says. Most of the scenes, including those on the family’s multi-million-dollar yachts, penthouses and offices, are filmed at various locations under the guidance of director Mark Mylod and production designer Stephen Carter.

“We have a lot of discussions about this, and the filming style is documentary derived, so the writing seeks to sort of give you the feeling of having a peek behind the curtain,” Armstrong says. “And that’s our creative touchstone, when we talk about the sets, what is it really like? And what it is really like is, sometimes, rather more anodyne and international hotel-ish. If you have seven homes, every room is not a beautifully curated expression of your personality.”

The filming locations need to be real, Armstrong says, “which means there is a lot of money. All portrayal can have a sort of element of glamourisation, and we don’t want to glamourise or de-glamourise it. It just should be what it is, which is the spaces you end up in with a lot of money, and their private jets, and their homes that feel quite a lot like international hotels.”

The score

One of the most surprising things about Succession is that the show’s composer, Nicholas Britell, is the guy who also did the scores for Moonlight, The Underground Railroad and the Disney reboot Cruella. Signing him, Armstrong says, was an unexpected boon of having Adam McKay direct the Succession pilot. “He’d worked with Nick on The Big Short and so when we were talking about the score, he was like, Nick’s the best.”

“Nick used to talk about this waltz that was an unsteady three-beat, like the three central kids [of the Roy family], never in time with each other,” Armstrong says. “So it became this kind of wonky, percussive, New York sound that I just immediately responded to and loved. Even in the edit, I usually watch the credit sequence for the episode and I still enjoy it. It’s a tonal reminder of what the show is, right?”

Shakespeare or soap opera?

The question is a simple one: is Succession a reboot of Dallas or King Lear? The answer is probably a little bit of both, though Armstrong confesses to be more familiar with the tonal notes of Shakespeare than with the history of 1980s-era American soaps. The key, Armstrong says, is to focus on “the most dramatic moments in these characters’ lives”. The challenge is to clearly commit to one or the other.

“The things that happen to these corporations are dramatic, and the things that happen to the people in their lives are dramatic, so I think, in a way, the challenge is to keep on incorporating how incredibly fast the media world, especially as tech collides with it, is changing, and the impact on the people in it,” Armstrong says. “As long as we follow the stories that we’ve set up and have the courage of our convictions, it feels like we don’t have that [uncertain] tension.”

The impact

Succession does not command Game of Thrones-esque ratings for its US network HBO, but it does command the lion’s share of the media noise machine. In part that is due to the way the Trump presidency reshaped the way the media noise machine works in the US, but it is also, Armstrong says, because nobody loves a peek into the world of the media more than the media itself.

“Honestly, I think there might be an element that we’re a media show, and the media is very interested in the media,” he says. “When I talk to people who love the show but are not journalists or people who work in film and TV, it seems like people connect with the familial relationships, the portrayal of psychology and, hopefully, the multifaceted nature of the characters that we intend to show.”

Succession (season 3) premieres on Monday, Foxtel on Demand at noon and Fox Showcase at 8.30pm

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