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All throughoutSuccessionthis season, weve heard rumblings about the Pierce family and their mighty prestige media empire.
But Tern Haven isnt so much a showdown as a show-off.
The Roy charade didnt exactly work, but Gerris prediction still came true: The cousins wanted yacht money.
That one dinner is a meticulously plotted collision of the seasons two biggest story lines.
We knew there would come a point where Logan tried to take things forward [with the Pierces].
We knew in that episode that we wanted it to explode.
They like to think of them as almost a public good.
To show them wanting something, to show them having to pretend to be a happier-seeming family.
as Armstrong puts it and Tracy structured Tern Haven so those awkward skirmishes would reverberate throughout the episode.
Logan looks around the cocktail hour, gritting his teeth as he sees all of his children fucking up.
He calls his family together to privately stew in a bedroom where hes barking orders.
It seems like the Roy-Pierce interactions cant get worse, but this isSuccession, so of course they do.
Everybody knows that the cameras around the table could be looking at them at any time, Mylod says.
Literally every single take, Ill be speaking with the camera operators and saying, Find me this moment.
But that wont be communicated to the actors.
They just know that theyre on at all times.
Its like a really, really slow version oftheJawsshot that tracks in on Brody.
Hopefully, you get sucked into it so that ultimately you feel like youre at the table with them.
Nan wouldve put herself at the back of the table, with her back to the fireplace.
She has the power position.
Shell have put Logan opposite her, he says.
Adds Tracy: We didnt want to have clear doppelganger analogs.
We didnt want each character in the Roy family to have their own bizarro version in the Pierce family.
An especially rich moment bubbles up when Peter and Marcie ask Roman if hes read any good novels recently.
In a way, its really a confrontational thing to do, Tracy explains.
Theres a lot of subtext in the way that they talk.
They communicate in these pleasant ways that have a more cutting subtext underneath.
For his part, Mylod relished the chance to make Roman writhe and wriggle in an uncomfortable spot.
Its the equivalent of a tomcat pissing in the corners, Mylod says.
Meanwhile, Kendall finds a frenemy in Naomi, another recovering addict who clocks him immediately.
The oxygen is sucked from the room.
How does such a crucial scene, especially one with such little dialogue, look on the page?
[The cast] played it so brilliantly that it does have that feel of realism.
Its a tricky thing to do because you dont want anyone in the scene to behave stupidly.
One of Shivs main flaws is her impetuousness.
Its her undoing in this episode, Mylod adds.
The Shiv moment is the climax of the scene, and the room deflates into a stunned silence afterward.
No one has gotten an answer theyre satisfied with or convinced by.
The kind of person she was meant that eventually she would.
