While Connor Could Be the Saddest and Kindest of the Roys on SUCCESSION, Alan Ruck Urges Viewers to Keep Things in Perspective

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede There are reasons to feel sorry for eldest son Connor Roy in HBO’s SUCCESSION, and a few more were added in the most recent episode. Despite the security of enormous wealth, Connor has spent most of his life feeling ignored and unloved. But leave it to Alan Ruck, the veteran actor who plays Connor, to remind everyone about the more basic aspects of the situation within the show. “He’s an awful person,” said a chuckling Ruck, speaking bluntly about his character during a virtual roundtable interview. “He’s entitled. He has all the same character defects as the others, but he’s not as mean as the others. Connor separated himself from the family business fairly early on. But they’re all just wretched human beings.” Some general up-to-date plotlines in SUCCESSION are about to be discussed, so this is a SPOILER ALERT. Heading into another new episode, Sunday, April 9 on Crave, Connor’s upcoming wedding – made more elaborate in an effort to bolster his doomed presidential campaign – appears to be on again, for the moment. Last weekend’s episode (the second in the fourth and final season) showed the aftermath of a disastrous rehearsal dinner, and the subsequent impromptu night on the town with the four Roy siblings – Connor, Siobhan (Sarah Snook), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), and Roman (Kieran Culkin) – was hijacked by business concerns, much to Connor’s chagrin. Despite everything that has happened, it was put to Ruck that Connor and his conflicted fiancée Willa (Justine Lupe) are actually the most stable romantic couple on the show. “Well, they’re both delusional,” Ruck agreed. “Truly, it started out as a transaction. She needed money, he needed a girlfriend, he had lots of money, so it would seem, in Connor’s mind, to be a match made in heaven. And then the more we learned about Willa, well, she’s not a very good playwright, but she’s determined to pursue it. So neither one of them is attached to the real world very solidly. But at least they have each other, whatever that may turn out to be.” The Roy siblings also have each other, kinda sorta. “For most of his life, Connor has been on the outside, with his nose pressed up against the glass,” Ruck said. “Occasionally, he’s let into this golden circle of the old man (Logan, played by Brian Cox) and the siblings. Connor has no friends. He has Willa now, which is wonderful for him. But his family, they’re all he has. And he knows what they really think of him. He’s not stupid, he’s delusional. Usually, his siblings are rude, dismissive, and belittling, but every now and then there’s some sweetness. And that’s what he lives for, because he doesn’t have anybody else.” It’s interesting to hear Ruck say that Connor has no friends. Do any of the Roys? Is it even possible to have real friends in this world? “I don’t know,’ Ruck acknowledged. “I think they’re all pretty much cut-and-run kind of people. Take the character of Siobhan. Beautiful young woman, charming, as smart as anybody in the room, and she’d slit your throat for a dollar. If there were an opportunity for her, and it meant stepping over a friend, she wouldn’t think about it twice. It’s all about the business. I don’t know if these people have the capacity to form friendships.” Ultimately, with SUCCESSION in its farewell season, Ruck was asked about the series potentially being remembered as one of the best shows of all time. “I hope we have a bit of that timeless quality, and I think we might,” he said. “All those great shows – BREAKING BAD, THE WIRE, THE SOPRANOS – I think we have the same attention to detail. The scripts are so layered, and so perfectly crafted, that I actually think we will stand the test of time. I don’t see why not. I’m hopeful about that.” But Ruck – who played another tragicomic ignored son, Cameron, back in the classic 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off –  is not quite as hopeful about the Roys. “I don’t know that I like any of them, and I don’t know that I feel close to any of them,” Ruck said. “I mean, I’m fond of Connor. And I’m amazed at the work that my castmates have done with these characters. But the characters are just completely miserable. Connor is maybe the least miserable of all, but he’s also quite vain – unjustifiably so. Jesse Armstrong (creator) and the writers give me outlandish, ridiculous things to say, and part of the pleasure of this job has been figuring out what kind of person would say these things, and who this guy is. But they’re all just so self-involved. I think they’re awful.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv