Kieran Culkin doesn't seem so sure 'Succession' is over

Wait, did Kieran Culkin just say there’s a chance of more ‘Succession’? A girl can dream ...

Kieran Culkin's character Roman Roy stands at a church lectern in an episode of "Succession."

May 23, 2023 3:57 PM PT

Kieran Culkin doesn’t like spoilers.

The “Succession” star who plays the F-bomb-dropping baby bro and potential Waystar-Royco successor told The Times’ Mark Olsen and Yvonne Villarreal last year that although he typically liked to know the full scope of a character’s story, with Roman Roy, “I found myself saying to [‘Succession’ creator Jesse Armstrong], ‘No spoilers, please. I only want to know as much as Roman knows, and I don’t want to know where it’s going.’”

But when Culkin spoke with Vanity Fair for an interview published Sunday, he said, “This was the only season where I indulged Jesse in letting him tell me what was going to happen with Roman,” and that he “always felt confident that if Jesse says this is the end, then it’s the end.”

But then he said something that made it sound like he actually wasn’t so confident that there won’t be more “Succession.”

“Jesse described to me the whole season before we shot. I asked him one question and when he answered it, I said, ‘Well that sort of sounds like the end of the show,’” Culkin told the outlet. “He goes, ‘Yeah, it does.’ But then he just threw up three different ideas for a Season 5 that he claimed were off the top of his head. I was like, ‘I’m just speaking my mind here. But those all sound, like, really awesome.’”

When asked to divulge the maybe-possibly-could be Season 5 ideas, Culkin said, “Nope, not without spoiling the end.”

But he did say, “It feels like an ending, but it also feels like there could be more.” He understands his showrunner’s struggle.

“He struggled with it all season while we were shooting. He was like, ‘Really? This is the end. But I’m not sure.’ He didn’t tell us [it was the last episode] until we did the table read for the last episode.”

So is there a chance, or isn’t there?

Sarah Snook, who plays the cunning Siobhan “Shiv” Roy, spoke with The Times in March after news dropped that the fourth season of the HBO juggernaut would be its last and revealed that she was in the dark about the fate of the show until the final table read in January.

“I was very upset,” Snook said. “I felt a huge sense of loss, disappointment and sadness. It would have been nice to know at the beginning of the season, but I also understand not being told until the end because there was still a potential that maybe this wasn’t going to be the end.”

“Emotionally, all of us weren’t necessarily ready to be done with the show because we love each other so much,” she added. “But everything has to come to an end, and it’s smart not to let something become a parody of itself.”

In February, Armstrong told the New Yorker about his “difficult” decision to end the series, explaining that he was feeling deeply conflicted.

“[T]he collaborations — with the cast, with my fellow writers, with Nick Britell and Mark Mylod and the other directors — they’ve just been so good. And I feel like I’ve done the best work I can do, working with them. And HBO has been generous and would probably have done more seasons, and they have been nice about saying, ‘It’s your decision.’ That’s nice, but it’s also a responsibility in the end — it feels quite perverse to stop doing it.

“So I do feel conflicted about that,” he continued. “And I feel sad, and I have the circus-has-left-town feeling that everyone gets who works on a production that’s good, and this one particularly so. I imagine I’ll be a little bit lonely, and wandering the streets of London in a funk.... I’ll probably be calling you up in about six months asking if people are ready for a reboot.”

Wait, did Kieran Culkin just say there’s a chance of more ‘Succession’? A girl can dream ...

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