Matthew Macfadyen on Tom Wambsgans – Rolling Stone

david m. Russell

This post contains mugs for Succession series finale.

Succession ended Sunday, answering the question fans of the HBO series have been asking since its inception five years ago: Who will succeed Logan Roy as CEO of Waystar?

Many viewers expected one of Roy’s three siblings to take over as the leader of the family business – Kendall, Roman or Siobhan – and for most of the episode, it seemed to be going in that direction. When it is revealed that GoJo boss Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) has been secretly pursuing other CEO options behind Siobhan (Sarah Snook)’s back despite being promised the role, the Roy siblings come together one last time. They’ve been making calls to other board members to get them to vote against selling Waystar to GoJo and appointing Kendall, played by Jeremy Strong, as the imminent CEO.

But what Schiff didn’t know until just before the board meeting was that Mattson had chosen her husband, Tom (Matthew McFadden), as the lead. This piece of information, which Tom shares at the last minute, causes Shiv to vote against her brothers in a tense series that ends up siding with Tom.

Maybe she didn’t choose Tom over her brothers. Maybe she couldn’t stand her older brother, Macfadyen he told the New York Times On what he thinks about choosing Siobhan at the last minute. “It’s not a binary choice. I just looked at Kendall and thought, ‘I can’t.’ I don’t think she made a rational decision. Then there’s this beautiful stage direction that Jesse scripted in Tom and Chef in the car. It’s about two bombs being transported.”

After the board votes in favor of the GoJo deal and Tom is announced as CEO of Waystar, he and Chef leave the building together in the back seat of a car. Sitting next to each other in silence, Tom reaches out next to him, leaving Chef with his hand open. She takes a beat, then places her hand on top of his, being careful not to intertwine her fingers. This moment is highly discussed and memed online Since the finale aired on Sunday night.

When asked if he thought Shiv’s hand-laying was a theatrical direction, McFayden said, “I think it was. Tom offers a helping hand. She puts her hand on top. Tom and Shiv after all they’ve been through, they feel cold and weird and not won over by Tom.” Not at all. They will go home and who knows?”

Regarding his character’s role in the show, Macfadyen said he believed Tom cared about the concept of strength just as much as others, and it would be “wrong” for viewers to underestimate that and think he didn’t.

Of the characters of Tom and Greg, Macfadyen said: “I’m sure there’s a clever answer in terms of dramatic narrative, like the fools in Shakespeare’s play, but that would diminish them, because they’re not just comic relief.” “But they’re not from the cold, tough, spoiled Roy family — they didn’t suffer at the hands of Logan like the siblings. They have a different energy.”