Jeremy Strong Says ‘Succession’ Role ‘F—ed Me Up’ and ‘I Don’t Miss It’: ‘I Sometimes Lost Touch With Joy’

Jeremy Strong said in a recent interview with The Times of London that playing Kendall Roy on HBO’s “Succession” for four seasons “fucked me up.” The actor won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the role, but he has no interest in returning to the world of “Succession” because he “sometimes lost touch with joy” while having to stay in Kendall’s tortured mindset.

“That show was an incalculable gift. The material a banquet. So I miss that. But Kendall’s struggle was difficult to carry for seven years,” Strong said. “And there’s just so much more I want to do.”

When asked about a Kendall Roy spinoff series, Strong responded: “It’s not something I have any wish to do any longer. I’m aware it is one of the main chapters of my life, but I don’t miss it.”

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Strong went on to say that he’s “rediscovered play” since wrapping “Succession” and taking on non-Kendall Roy roles such as Roy Cohn in the Donald Trump movie “The Apprentice.” The actor told The New York Times Magazine earlier this year that he wanted to move on from Kendall quickly.

“There was a moment when the show ended where I felt a profound sense of, ‘Was this the thing? Was this the event of my life?’ And then a great determination to achieve exit velocity from it so I could attempt to do more,” he said at the time.

Strong added that “I haven’t spent much time worrying about” whether he’ll be able to distance himself from Kendall, which will always be his career-defining role. The New York Times Magazine noted that many actors, be it James Gandolfini (“The Sopranos”) or Alan Alda (“M*A*S*H”), struggled to move their careers beyond an iconic TV role. That doesn’t appear to be a concern for Strong.

“I went right into Roy Cohn, partly just to sort of shake [‘Succession’] off,” Strong said. “Roy Cohn, you can’t overstate his influence in our country, his legacy of the denial of reality and certain things that he imparted to Donald Trump. His playbook has a tentacular reach that is staggering — the most fascinating person I’ve ever tried to inhabit. I should say a disclaimer: My job is to be a humanistic investigator of a subject and to withhold judgment. So while I personally might have a lot of judgment about Roy Cohn, that is not the part of me that engages in the creative work.”

Head over to The Times of London’s website to read Strong’s latest profile in its entirety.