Succession‘s J. Smith-Cameron would have liked a Roman and Gerri reunion: “Too bad!”
J. Smith-Cameron might not have gotten a happy ending with Kieran Culkin, but she would return to the Succession world
Aux News Succession
When Succession aired its series finale on Sunday, it marked the end of the road for slime puppy stans—and that includes J. Smith-Cameron, the Gerri to Kieran Culkin’s Roman. “My ex wants me back,” she posted on Twitter alongside a final shot of Roman sipping a martini, “(is how some people interpreted this).” But Gerri and Roman never got their reunion, no matter how much Smith-Cameron and the rest of the fans wanted it.
Granted, a happy ending for anybody would have been “very off-brand” for creator Jesse Armstrong,” Smith-Cameron tells Entertainment Weekly in a new interview. “Yeah, I know. Too bad! I could see maybe down the road those two having a drink together, now that that dynamic has rearranged, and Gerri has the upper hand. I think she could stomach it.”
Imagining the future of her character, Smith-Cameron feels like Gerri “still could sue Roman personally” over her severance, despite ending the series back at Waystar Royco. “She would go for it, if it was in her best interest. If it’s in her best interest to drop it, she would drop it.”
“I feel Roman really considered it a romantic relationship, but I’m not sure that Jesse ever did, and I don’t know what Gerri [thought],” she reflects about the characters’ strange psychosexual dynamic. “I feel she humored him, because there was maybe something flattering about being desired that way, but also there was something useful about having a Roy in your back pocket. But I do think that over time Roman really got under her skin and she had a real true affection for him. That’s why it hurt so bad to feel betrayed with the horrible horrible firing scene in season 4. That felt so scary and dangerous when we acted that.”
Roman aside, if there was ever any kind of Succession spin-off, sign Gerri up. “[The] Waystar/ATN world of the show is so pertinent, and so in the headlines right now today,” Smith-Cameron says. “I feel it could be a show with the focus not on who was going to take Logan’s place but on to the fascist president and the Elon Musk-Waystar that was still such a reflection of what is going on right now. If there was such a show, and Gerri had a place in it, I would be overjoyed, but I’m not expecting it.”
8 Comments
Loved the show. Perhaps my favorite show ever, full stop. And loved Gerri, the weird dynamic w/ Roman, etc. But I really do not want a spin off. Not with any of the characters. I’m done with this universe. There is real power in quitting while you’re ahead, which is partly why I thought they chose to end the series when they did (plus, they’d told a complete story where anything beyond would have been diminishing returns). I want Armstrong and the rest of the creative team to go off and do new and interesting things. I want other creators to be inspired by Succession, not to imitate it. And I want the murderer’s row of talent to get awesome new opportunities to shine.
What, you don’t want to watch Kendall spend a bunch of his buyout money repeatedly falling on his face with hairbrained business ventures?
I’m not sure I want to put Jeremy Strong through one more second of inhabiting Kendall’s psyche.
I’m going to just pretend that Mencken isn’t actually going to become president and I will broker no disagreement on the subject!
I think the show left plenty of ambiguity there. A bunch of mail-in ballots (which usually skew Democrat) burning up, resulting in a razor margin of victory? Lawsuits that would make Bush v Gore look like a schoolyard spat.
Did you read my post??
“Granted, a happy ending for anybody would have been “very off-brand” for creator Jesse Armstrong,””
Tom had a happy ending. Greg had a happy ending. Roman had a not-unhappy ending. Matsson had a happy ending.Shiv too, maybe she didn’t have a happy ending, but she’s the one of the three kids who ended on her own terms.
I know that it’s a pipe dream that will never happen, but IFF only Armstrong would have followed the UK format, we would be still looking forward to their “Christmas Episode”. The final season conceit of each episode=1 day made it impossible, but there is one more crucial, revelatory, truth-revealing, comfort-shattering event that takes place a few months later in the IRL successions of the rich & powerful, that could have easily been the finale, and could still be be the richest ‘Epilogue’ episode/revisitation of the show: The Reading of Logan’s will. That is where Logan’s children and women would learn with vicious finality the truth of what he thought of each of them, translated into his most deeply telling lingua franca – what he left them, rated in value. To him, the shares he left them would communicate so much from beyond the grave as to what they meant to him while he was alive.