Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy in Succession. Photo / Supplied
This article does not contain spoilers for the final episode.
Once overshadowed by his brother Macaulay, the superstar’s family is even more tangled than the Roys.
In episode one, series one of Succession, Roman Roy introduced himself to viewers in all his cocky, profane, sarcastic, arrogant, rule-defying glory: “Hey hey hey, motherf***ers!”
Yet from that first line, over the course of four series, the actor Kieran Culkin has brought so much to a character who could well have been purely comic. And it feels like we’re reaching the Roman, um, climax now. If season one of Succession was about Kendall and his desperation, and season two was about Logan and his past, and season three was Shiv and Tom and their disintegrating relationship, then season four, the final one, has unquestionably belonged to Roman.
Roman has had a lot to do this season: firing Gerri, the object of his sexual obsession; forgetting to tell his dying father that he loved him; proving he is truly Logan’s heir when he pushes to declare the far-right political candidate to be the next US president because it suits his business interests, only to implode when giving his father’s eulogy. But Culkin has had more. Roman’s free-wheeling, profanity-laced riffs feel so natural because often Culkin is improvising them.
Alan Ruck, who plays Connor Roy, told me two years ago: “When we first shot the pilot, we were all encouraged to improvise, so I started bullshitting about how there’s this lake underneath my property and one day water will be more valuable than gold. Kieran was staring at me and he said, ‘I don’t like this. I like writers to write my lines and I like to memorise them and I like to perform them.’”
Ruck recalled how between the pilot and when they shot the first season ten months later something clicked with Culkin. “He is now like an artesian well, an inexhaustible supply of crap. He can riff on any subject and you can’t win against Kieran now — he’s the absolute best.”
Culkin was the first person Jesse Armstrong, the Succession creator, cast. No matter what Roman is doing — whether it’s watching the rocket he was in charge of blow up on launch or accidentally sending his father a dick pic in the middle of a meeting — Culkin suggests his character is going through at least 17 other emotions simultaneously.
Shame, self-loathing, fear: these are all par for the course for the Roy children. But Culkin also invests Roman with a strong sense of moral decay and an even stronger sense of self-preservation that makes you think he might be the one who actually survives his messed-up family. If the Roys were the Corleones, he would be Michael.
This would be an impressive achievement for any actor. But from Culkin, a former child star whose family is even more complicated than the Roys, and who could so easily have come undone like his elder brother Macaulay did, it is an astonishing, improbable triumph.
Despite or because he has been acting since he was eight years old, Culkin, 40, is generally loath to invest what he does with too much excitement or mystique. “I had this unhealthy relationship with what I did for a living. I really wanted to do it, but I didn’t want to be successful at it,” he said, recalling what it was like to be a child actor in a rare interview this year.
Two years ago he seemed to be making a dig at Jeremy Strong, who plays Kendall, when he talked about Strong’s labour-intensive approach to acting. “That might be something that helps him. I can tell you that it doesn’t help me,” Culkin told The New Yorker. I asked Strong what it’s like to work with someone whose approach to acting is so different from his own.
“Some actors — me — need a certain amount of doggedness and labour and hyper-focus to get there. Kieran just is there. There’s no sweat equity, and he is unburdened by analysis. Kieran has an incredibly agile mind, but, what’s more, he is as open and as present an actor as I’ve ever encountered. It makes working with him an experience of touching the third rail, which is what you want.”
Do the differences in the way they work ever cause problems? “The truth is, Kieran is one of my most favourite scene partners I’ve had in the seven years of working on Succession. While he and I clash on some levels and have not always seen eye to eye, I count him as a brother in arms,” Strong says.
By all reports Culkin is close to pretty much everyone on Succession. Sarah Snook, who plays Shiv, has said that she and Culkin have a “very sibling relationship”. When Brian Cox won a Golden Globe in 2020 for his portrayal of Logan, he stopped en route to the stage to give Culkin a tender kiss on the mouth. “Ah, Kieran. I love Kieran, he’s my boy,” Cox said with a smile when I asked him about it the next year.
There is an inescapable poignancy to Culkin’s relations with his on-set family, given how fractured his off-screen one is. He is the fourth of seven Culkin children, and the family had financial difficulties early on. Their father, Kit, encouraged all of the children to act, although only Macaulay, Kieran and their younger brother Rory did so successfully. Kit was a former stage actor who worked for a while as a church sacristan before becoming his children’s manager — which, through Macaulay, made him one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. Kieran Culkin briefly appears in the 1980s blockbuster Home Alone, but of course it was Macaulay, the star, who was propelled to unimaginable global fame.
“What people sometimes fail to remember, too, is that he was a kid. He didn’t really choose that. It’s something that happened to him. And I think when you’re a kid you obviously don’t have the tools to handle something like that,” Culkin said in an interview with NPR.
Far from making him jealous, Macaulay’s superstardom taught Culkin a crucial life lesson. “I got to experience it second-hand as a child. So to me I have always known this is not something one would want to pursue.
“It’s not a very nice thing, fame. No anonymity. It’s terrible,” he said in the same interview.
Photos of the two tiny brothers at movie premieres on the red carpet, both in tuxedos, are cute and devastating. When Culkin was 12, his parents separated and had a bitter custody fight. He personally wrote a note to the court begging them to not let the press cover his parents’ battling. His request was denied. Culkin has been estranged from his father ever since.
Yet through it all Culkin kept acting. His first sizeable part as a child was when he played Matty Banks, the screen son of Steve Martin and Diane Keaton in the 1991 film Father of the Bride. While his brothers slowly pulled away from acting, Culkin kept going, in films like She’s All That, The Cider House Rules and Igby Goes Down, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe.
In 2008 the family suffered tragedy when his sister, Dakota, known as Cody, was killed in a road accident. Culkin focused on indie films, such as Scott Pilgrim vs the World.
Four years later, in a bar in New York, he met Jazz Charton, 35, a British former model from London. They married in 2013 in Iowa while on a road trip, with three strangers as witnesses. The couple have a daughter and son.
Charton frequently shares glimpses of their sweetly happy life: after Culkin failed to win at the Golden Globes in 2020, she posted a photo of him and wrote, “My 3 time Golden Globe loser. I got pregnant last time he lost so I’m out of consolation ideas . . .”
Marriage has undoubtedly provided Culkin with the kind of familial stability he didn’t have when he was growing up. He recently said: “I feel like what I’m supposed to do is be a stay-at-home dad. That’s where I feel like I’m the most me. And anything that takes me away from that is wrong.”
Alas for him, after his performance as Roman Roy there will be lots of directors wanting to drag him out of his house and put him on the screen.
Written by: Hadley Freeman
© The Times of London
Ebony Lamb performs Successful Feelings. Made with funding from NZ On Air. Video / Locals Only