Strong takes a very exhaustive approach to his “Succession” character with a burning intensity that mirrors his character’s. Kendall takes his own life very seriously but has an absurd grandiosity coupled with a pathetic attempt to shield himself with self-aware irony that makes his efforts as comedic as they are deeply tragic.
“Kendall desperately wants it to be his turn,” the Emmy Award-winning actor explained to The New Yorker. “To me, the stakes are life and death. I take him as seriously as I take my own life.” Strong said he practices “identity diffusion” much like Daniel Day Lewis, a technique that often gets incorrectly prescribed as Method acting.
When he came back to visit set after wrapping season 1, series creator Jesse Armstrong “didn’t recognize him,” he confessed to GQ. “The way that he’d been carrying himself for the preceding weeks as he played Kendall in the dark place meant that his whole physicality was completely different.”
Despite his commitment to staying in character, Strong doesn’t always manage to pull out a perfect performance right off the bat. His Tuscan summer meltdown at the end of season 3 was a huge obstacle for the actor at first.
“I just remember being in that sort of trance in this room before we shot that scene and the feeling of peril,” he recalled. In the end, he was able to over come his own mental block by switching things up, because “part of what you have to do as an actor is get out of your way.”
“That was a tough day. You know, the scene didn’t go so well for like 9 or 10 takes. And then on the next take, I sat down on the ground which I hadn’t done before, and that’s what’s in the show.”