Succession composer Nicholas Britell already knew that Logan Roy was going to die in Season Four. In fact, it was his starting point in creating the musical soundscape that wrapped itself around the final season of the hit HBO series. That moment gave him enough emotional insight to build off without needing to know every detail about the upcoming episodes down to the final scenes. In the latest episode of The Breakdown, Britell takes Rolling Stone through his process of creating the chilling sounds of Succession and preserving the element of surprise to better serve the audience.
“I actually didn’t know how the season would end until pretty late. And that was a conscious decision. I didn’t want to know. I wanted to feel the reveal the way an audience would, which I think helps me hopefully to get a sense of like, as an audience member, what is the show actually presenting,” Britell explains. “And then how do I want musically to either enhance that or perhaps go in counterpoint to that? If I have an immediate reaction to something as opposed to knowing it in advance, I think it helps me to have a more instinctive musical approach to that.”
It helped that the band of characters on Succession came with so many of their own complexities. Musically, Britell was able to peel back the layers of people like Logan or even Tom Wambsgans and Shiv Roy. His conversations with Succession creator Jesse Armstrong about the final season expanded the parameters of how the family could be explored musically.
“I’m trying to create the sense of a family’s loss, but also, I think the reality of his legacy is as important as the family’s loss and the truth of his legacy,” Britell says. “I am inspired by all the characters when I’m writing the music, but I often don’t really write themes for characters because I feel that, to me, what really impacts me musically is the relationships between the characters in this sort of dynamic way.”