It was a term of Jerry Hall’s divorce settlement from Rupert Murdoch, according to Vanity Fair, that she couldn’t “give story ideas” to the writers of Succession. Thankfully, as its sublime finale showed last week, they continued to manage without her contributions.
Whatever was behind Murdoch’s Succession anxiety, it confirmed what was widely assumed: that a drama in which an elderly tyrant’s adult children compete to inherit a media empire (built on the subjugation of political leaders) held up a mirror to his own dynasty, even if, as its creator would regularly insist, it wasn’t based on them. “It’s not bullshit to say it really isn’t the Murdochs,” Jesse Armstrong told the Guardian in 2018, when Succession launched. That was four years before Hall was let go, in terms that only emphasised the gulf between Murdochian reality and a Succession script. “Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage,” went her husband’s unexpected email, according to Vanity Fair. “We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do.” You wondered if an earlier wife, Wendy Deng, mocked for her musings on Tony Blair (“He has such good body and he has really really good legs Butt …”) wasn’t actually more fluent than her ex.
