Development Showrunner
Jesse Armstrong initially conceived the series as a feature film about the
Murdoch family, but the script never went into production. Armstrong eventually expanded the scope of the story to include the larger landscape of
Wall Street, which he felt better suited a television format. Armstrong wrote a new script centered on original characters loosely inspired by various powerful media families such as the Murdochs, the
Redstones, the
Maxwells, and the
Sulzbergers. On June 6, 2016, it was announced that
HBO had given the production a pilot order. The episode was written by Armstrong and directed by
Adam McKay. Executive producers for the pilot include Armstrong, McKay,
Will Ferrell,
Frank Rich, and
Kevin Messick. On May 16, 2017, it was announced that HBO had given the production a series order for a first season consisting of ten episodes. The previously announced creative team continued their involvement as the series entered into production.
Casting On October 6, 2016, it was announced that
Brian Cox,
Jeremy Strong,
Kieran Culkin,
Sarah Snook,
Nicholas Braun, and
Matthew Macfadyen had been cast in lead roles in the series' pilot. On November 4, 2016, it was announced that
Hiam Abbass,
Alan Ruck,
Rob Yang,
Parker Sawyers, and
Peter Friedman had also joined the main cast of the pilot. Sawyers only appears in the pilot. On January 24, 2018, it was reported that
Ashley Zukerman had joined the series in a recurring role. In season one,
Justine Lupe was cast in a recurring guest role as Willa Ferreyra, the much younger girlfiend of Connor Roy. Lupe said that her character Willa was originally supposed to only appear in 3 episodes before she parts ways with Connor Roy in "
Austerlitz". The scheduled breakup in "Austerlitz" was removed following script rewrites for the episode and the character continued to appear in subsequent episodes and seasons.
Juliana Canfield originally auditioned for the role of Willa Ferreyra but the role ended up going to Lupe. A week after auditioning for Willa, Canfield was called back by casting directors to audition for a role named Jay who is a political aide to Shiv when she became involved in
Democratic Party politics with Gil Eavis. The actress received a call that the role of Jay was cancelled, but she was requested to play a new character named Jess who would be the assistant to Kendall. Canfield was cast as Jess Jordan in 2017 as she was graduating from the
Yale School of Drama.
Filming The series pilot for
Succession was filmed in fall 2016 with
Adam McKay directing and Andrij Parekh as cinematographer. In defining the look of
Succession, Parekh used
Barry Ackroyd's work on McKay's
The Big Short as a reference point.
Succession was shot on 3-perf
35mm film using the
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219
film stock which is optimized for both daylight and tungsten lighting. McKay was "adamant from the start that
Succession must be shot on film and pushed that through with the producers" according to cinematographer Andrij Parekh. The fly-on-the-wall perspective allows the camera to react to what is happening in front of the lens. Cinematographer Patrick Capone characterized the series' camerawork as "voyeuristic" and "non-cinema[tic]", relying on natural light, close coverage and frequent zooms to evoke the feeling of "eavesdropping" upon the characters and their environments. In order to fully cover dialogue scenes, a
multiple-camera setup was used. Principal photography for the rest of the first season of the series began in October 2017. The season was primarily filmed in
New York City locations with additional locations in
New Jersey,
New Mexico and the
United Kingdom. In New York City, the
American Irish Historical Society on
Fifth Avenue served as the location for Logan Roy's apartment. 714
Broadway was used as the location of Shiv's season 1 apartment, and the
Downtown Manhattan Heliport on the
East River for scenes of the Roys departing on their helicopters. For scenes depicting the interiors of the Waystar RoyCo offices, the crew used towers
4 and
7 of the
World Trade Center, while
28 Liberty Street is used for exterior shots.
Silvercup Studios in
Queens houses many of the sets used for the series. Other filming locations for the first season included
Bellevue Hospital (where the second episode took place), the
Cunard Building on 25 Broadway (which houses
Cipriani S.A., the venue for a gala in the fourth episode), the East New York Freight Tunnel (the entrance of a bachelor party in the eighth episode), and the
Financial District of
Lower Manhattan. From mid-to-end of January 2018, the production moved from New York to
New Mexico for the episode "
Austerlitz", which was primarily filmed in
Santa Fe. On February 22, 2018, filming took place in
New Jersey, which required the closing of the
Atlantic City-Brigantine tunnel. Production on the final two episodes of season one moved to the United Kingdom. On February 25, 2018, filming for Shiv and Tom's wedding took place at
Eastnor Castle in
Herefordshire,
England. Eastnor Castle is often used as a real-life wedding locale. The final episode's underwater lake scene following the car crash, in which Kendall escapes from the car wreckage, was filmed in a giant water tank at
Pinewood Studios. Prior to filming, actor Jeremy Strong had never taken part in a significant on-screen stunt before. According to Capone, some members of the crew wanted to shoot the underwater sequences digitally with the assumption that the process would be quicker. A second camera was ready but was never used and instead the underwater sequences were entrely shot on film. Filming for the exterior shots of the lake was done at the Victoria Lake near Pinewood Studios.
Post-production The post-production processing of the film stock for the series pilot was done by the
FotoKem film laboratory in
Los Angeles. By the time the full series had gone into production, film was processed and developed at the newly-launched Kodak Film Lab in
New York City. Scenes shot for the final two episodes in the UK were processed at the British lab Cinelab. The captured 35mm film stock was scanned at
4K resolution for post-production editing. == Music ==