Succession actor Jeremy Strong has spoken out and expressed empathy after it was revealed that the hit HBO show was partially responsible for starting a feud in Rupert Murdoch’s family.
In sealed testimony delivered in a court in Reno, Nevada, Murdoch’s four eldest children, Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence, revealed how an episode of the show, where the patriarch of a wealthy media family, played by Brian Cox, suddenly dies, forced them to reassess their own father’s succession plan.
The 93-year-old media mogul failed in his bid to change his family trust, which now gives his four oldest children equal voting power to control the group behind News Corp and Fox News after his death.
A court commissioner ruled that Mr Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the head of Fox News and News Corp, had acted in “bad faith” and called their efforts a “carefully crafted charade” designed to “permanently cement” Lachlan’s control, according to a sealed document obtained at the weekend by The New York Times.
Strong, 45, who played Kendall Roy in Succession, the heir apparent to his father Logan Roy, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live and was asked about the show’s role in Murdoch’s real-life drama.
As is typical with Strong, he gave a long analogy in response to the query, referencing a recent interaction he had at a screening of the Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice, where he plays controversial lawyer Roy Cohn.
“Something happened a couple of weeks ago, we had a screening of The Apprentice and there was a filmmaker there called Ivy Meeropol,” began Strong.
“She made a documentary about Roy Cohn, called Bully Coward Victim. She’s the granddaughter of Julius Rosenberg, who Roy Cohn sent to the electric chair. She made a very empathic documentary examining this person, holding him to account but also implying empathy.
“My feeling when I met her after the screening was ‘Wow, what we do is not a game’. There are real people on the end of this, watching us on television, watching us in a theatre.”
Eventually moving on to the Murdoch situation, the actor said: “So when I read that about the Murdochs, who I feel great empathy for what they are going through as a family, having been part of an adjacent world like that for seven years. My feeling is ‘I take that very seriously’. I’ve been accused of taking it seriously and I do take it seriously.”
Lawyer Adam Streisand, acting on behalf of Murdoch, told The New York Times they planned to appeal the decision handed down by a court in Nevada.
Prudence, Elisabeth and James, said in a statement given to the Times: “We welcome Commissioner Gorman’s decision and hope that we can move beyond this litigation to focus on strengthening and rebuilding relationships among all family members.”
Additional reporting from PA.
