I Attended Logan Roy’s Funeral
As a “friend of the family” for two days, I got to watch the process behind and in front of the scene
A few years ago, a friend who was searching for casting notices suitable for her young daughter sent me a casting notice for something filming in my Hudson Valley town. I’ve been on film sets before. It isn’t particularly fun, particularly if you are there as an actual friend of a member of the cast, because people keep trying to figure out who you are, or why you aren’t in makeup, why you haven’t responded to the call to hit your mark. “I’m just a hanger-on,” you have to say. And then you feel like an idiot. So I wasn’t initially interested in becoming an extra in anything. But it was the middle of the pandemic; what else was there to do to get out of the house? So, after multiple covid tests and a particularly lengthy costume fitting, I spent a day as a prison visitor in a scene with Woody Harrelson for HBO’s “The White House Plumbers.” There were multiple food trucks, the production staff was incredibly kind, and I got to feed Justin Theroux’s pit bull watermelon from one of the craft services booths. (I also got paid: for the covid test, for the costuming, for the day on set; it was not a bad way to pick up an extra $300.)
Afterwards, I continued to get text alerts of “opportunities” and found myself actually considering doing it again. But I set a rule for myself: I would only apply for work on a project that I already had some interest in, some familiarity with the talent, some idea that what transpired on set might actually be interesting. I zeroed in on Succession, which I had binged during the pandemic and was now coming to an end. How interesting that would be! Unless, maybe it wasn’t!
There were a lot of calls for extras this season, and I applied for them all. When I finally got cast as a “friend of the family” at an “upscale social event,” I assumed I’d be lingering in the background of a cocktail party. Then more notices came up around the same production dates: they needed members of an orchestra, members of a choir, a number of priests, press, secret service. I was certain I was attending a funeral. Unlike my Plumbers experience, for this assignment, we were told to bring our own wardrobe, including formal suit, tie, shoes. I arrived at the “holding” location—a small church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan—and into total chaos. There was a line around the block of fellow mourners who were waiting to check in. Once we hadchecked in at a folding table on the sidewalk, there was a line, shoulder-to-shoulder, up several winding flights of stairs to get tested for Covid. Shoulder-to-shoulder before covid clearance seemed like a problem, but then, once our nostrils were swabbed we were told to report to set immediately. Were they even processing the tests? No one knew. And there was one more stop before the set: an endless line into the basement for hair and make-up after a wardrobe check at the alter.
The actual filming location was a few blocks away, at a huge cathedral on Park Avenue. On the walk over, I did the math in my head: hundreds of extras, a cathedral rental, a promised lunch (which never arrived and then was frantically distributed to us non-union folks at the end of the day). This was expensive. And they clearly were just getting set up. We were sent to the basement to wait, where the folding chairs had all been filled by everyone who had arrived before us. I wedged myself against the wall near the back. A side door opened and James Cromwell (Ewan Roy) popped in. We smiled at each other and said hello, then simultaneously realized that we don’t actually know each other, though, in my defense, we have crossed paths at Hudson Valley political events so maybe we feel familiar.
I began questioning some of the people around me, because I always question the people around me. It was a mix of people doing remote work for their office while taking extra work on sets and others who were retired. On the younger end of the scale were some acting students, aspiring models, bartenders, etc. When we finally were called upstairs and seated by age group, they handed out the funeral program. We were attending the funeral of Ewan Roy. “And yet I just spoke to him downstairs,” I said to the strangers next to me. It was a ruse, to throw off the press and spys on the set. In spite of the show’s name, no one could know that Logan Roy was dead.
Once the crowd was seated, the PAs began fitting the actors into the seating chart. A row ahead of me and a few people down was Lukas Mattson (Alexander Skarsgard). Across the aisle and a few rows back: presumed President elect Mencken (Justin Kirk). A bit further behind me, Sandi (Hope Davis) and her wheelchair bound father, Sandy (Larry Pine). Ahead and to the left: the widows Marcia (Hiam Abbass), Caroline (Harriet Walter), and Kerry (Zoe Winters). To the right: Gerri and the lawyers, including Hugo, played by Fisher Stevens, who still looks much like my own brother.
Director Mark Mylod appeared to let us know that we would be running the scene without any breaks and it would run about thirty minutes. Taped processional music was played: a bit too jaunty, with each new take it sounded to me more and more like George Delerue’s score for Truffaut’s Day for Night. In came the priests, the mourners led by Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook), the casket carried by Cousin Greg (Alan Ruck) and others. Connor delivered a very carefully chosen Bible passage (which didn’t make the final cut) and then the very undead Ewan Roy rose up from his seat, fumbled with his nephews as they tried to sit him back down, and rose to the podium to deliver a blistering assessment of his dead brother. Roman followed, but almost immediately broke down and was replaced by his older brother Kendall, whose speech was a rousing call to essentially continue on as his awful father would have done. Then the lone female voice: Shiv—figuring why not at this point—took the mic to talk about the invisibility of women at any table or boardroom in the world of the Roys. This was followed by a mimed benediction from the main priest, and a procession back out of the church. And repeat.
In between takes, we asked each other questions. Where was Tom? Were he and Shiv still together? What episode was this? Who else was missing? After several takes Mark Mylod reminded us that we were also in the scene. This hadn’t occurred to us; we were watching it as if it was a play. We needed to react, but what of all of this would register as a surprise to anyone who knows the Roy family?
After of these long takes, we were given a short break. In the church basement, the line for coffee wrapped around the entire circumference of the room. We had fifteen minutes; they had four people, two coffee makers and a snack bar stocked with bulk items from Costco. Oskar (Johannes Haukur Johannesson), one of Mattson’s associates, looked at me and said, “We should probably just all go to Starbucks.” He was right, but time was up.
In the afternoon and into the next day, we watched as they made small tweaks in each of the eulogies. Roman, who brought me to tears with a breakdown at the podium, now mumbles and steps away, not making a sound until he nearly collapses into the arms of his siblings. Kendall’s long-winded speech (and in life it would, I have no doubt, be long winded) became more focused but still a bit stumbling as he finds his ground. At the end, we were told, we need to applaud with recognition that Kendall can steer the ship. At this point, I was sitting in the pew realizing that the primary concern of all of the people gathered is likely: what is my financial future? After the prompt to applaud Kendall, many of us spontaneously applauded Shiv’s subsequent take; this applause did not make it into the episode, but I held on to hope that it would.
Then we were told to stand and chat as multiple cameras filmed all the small side conversations the characters were having, but which remained a mystery to us until the episode aired. And here’s where I began to recognize the brilliance of Succession (and creator Jesse Armstrong): I knew so much very specific information about this enormous, pivotal scene, but still knew nothing at all. In a show that on the surface may seem obvious and schematic, the real secret is that there are layers and layers of subtext. The events of the funeral would take on a different meaning after the eight episodes of Season 4 that preceded, and the tiny moments that filled the rest of episode 9: the illegitimate election results, Shiv’s pregnancy, Rava’s confrontation of Kendall about their children’s future in a world that he’s created, even Caroline’s rounding up of all the mistresses to sit together (which to me seemed more of a way of getting a dig at Marcia.) Plus all of that craft: the edits on set, the tweaks of dialogue, the decisions of which take to use in the end (which I didn’t always agree with).
It was an amazing experience. I felt spoiled by getting to watch the process. I also knew that if I ever sign up to be an extra again, the experience will never be as rich.
I love this. I can see you in your account. Now I will search for you in the camera scans.