If Rupert Murdoch and his family really did inspire Succession, then a new report from Vanity Fair confirms that the HBO series really nailed the tone.
“After interviewing dozens of people for this story, I was struck by how sad all the Murdochs seem,” reporter Gabriel Sherman writes for VF. “Some [Rupert] Murdoch profiles liken his late career arc to Shakespeare’s King Lear.”
Beyond that, however, the VF report also seems to indicate that Jesse Armstrong and his series have gotten under Murdoch’s skin. It apparently even factored into his divorce from Jerry Hall last year.
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A source told Sherman that Rupert’s eldest son, Lachlan, once told his father that his younger son, James, had begun leaking stories to Succession writers. Meanwhile, a person close to Lachlan denied that he’d said such a thing.
The second mention of Succession in Vanity Fair’s report feels even more personal. Sherman writes that Murdoch’s divorce settlement with Jerry Hall also included the stipulation that bars the model and actress from giving story ideas to Succession.
Armstrong, meanwhile, has tamped down the notion that his story is based solely on one family. “This is a fictional family,” he told Variety in 2018. He added: “There’s loads of succession stories to draw on. We wanted to draw on all the good, rich stories there are about succession and about media and high politics.”
A year later, when the New York Times cheekily asked if Armstrong was basing his series on the Murdochs and had a mole in their household, Armstrong once again rebuffed the idea. “The amazing thing about this stuff is that it’s everywhere,” he replied. “Sumner Redstone’s family. The Mercers. The Murdochs. Conrad Black. Sometimes people have said, it’s really about these people, isn’t it? It’s based on them. And: No. We read widely and we do take elements of stuff.”
“Hopefully, if you’re writing in the right area, you end up hitting reality,” Armstrong added at the time. “But there are no moles.”
Murdoch claims to have never watched Succession, as does James, but various members of the family supposedly do. If so, we’re guessing Sunday’s episode was a doozy.
