Succession has no shortage of memorable personalities. At its heart, the HBO series about a business scion and his squabbling children is a character study, one that has produced some of the most richly fleshed-out figures to grace our screens in years. But while much ink has been devoted to the complexities of Logan, Kendall, Roman, Shiv, and other major players of the show, Succession’s excellent supporting characters deserve a paean of their own. Whether they can only claim a single or several dozen lines of dialogue, these are some of the minor characters who make the series sing:
Karl Muller
I first took notice of Karl when he became a victim of “boar on the floor” in one of the most electrifying scenes of Season 2. Here was this staid-looking man, dressed in his little tan outfit, suddenly brawling for a sausage with a brutality that was, frankly, shocking. This polarity came to define Karl: Most of the time he appeared to be a mild-mannered, ass-kissing joke of an executive, until out of nowhere he would come out with a one-liner so unexpectedly savage that it plucks a hoot of delight from your throat. Peer into my head and you’ll find David Rasche’s perfectly contemptuous delivery of “Chuckles the clown? I think not” replaying in one never-ending loop. —Jenny G. Zhang, senior editor
Jeryd Mencken
Succession has had so many memorable supporting characters that not all of them can get their due, but Justin Kirk’s third-season appearance as the white nationalist presidential hopeful was too instantly memorable—too terrifying, too charismatic—to be just a one-off. A soft-spoken demagogue with sex appeal to burn—just ask Roman, whose every scene opposite Mencken plays like a covert seduction—he’s a more camera-ready version of the extremists who have taken over Republican politics in the non-Succession world, which makes him feel like an even bigger potential menace. (Just imagine Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis if they knew how to wear a suit.) He’s still had precious little screen time, but there’s no question what he stands for or how dangerous he is. —Sam Adams, senior editor
Marcia Roy
Is there anyone more effortlessly elegant and bitingly cruel than Hiam Abbass’ Marcia Roy? She’s probably the only fictional character for whom I’ve ever found myself (unwittingly) cheering as she slut-shames the women around her (lest we forget her coarse interrogation of Rhea’s STD testing regimen or her grim retelling of the death of a French sex worker she once knew). Succession is clear about the type of woman who ends up married to capitalist demon Logan Roy: She’s callous and brilliant, fearless and mean, and one of the few people on the planet who can give Logan a taste of his own nasty medicine. “I’m bored. You’re. Boring. Me,” she tosses to Logan right before he’s supposed to accept an award for 50 years of business success. Kendall, Shiv, and Roman could never. —Madeline Ducharme, producer for What Next
Caroline Collingwood
The pain of Lady Caroline’s relationship with her children is the pain of a bruise: Pressing it hurts, but sometimes you can’t resist poking the tender flesh one more time, to see if the sharp ache is still there. Her complicated motherhood, although glimpsed only in brief snatches here and offhand remarks there, is one of the most exquisitely wrought things on Succession. She lost her sons and daughter to Logan’s terrible might—but then muses that maybe some people were never meant to be mothers. She admits to the “onion” of that sting—but then sells out her kids once more. She is an emotionally distant, cold, absent mother—yet, with a single glance, understands that Shiv is pregnant. Caroline (an excellent Harriet Walter) is every mommy issue and mother complex wrapped up in one extraordinary, acid figure. Light a cigarette for mummy dearest. — JGZ
Gerri Kellman
During Shiv’s wedding festivities in Season 1, she takes Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) aside and brokers an agreement to lessen ATN’s personal attacks on her preferred presidential candidate Gil Eavis, in exchange for keeping her knowledge about the cruises cover-up a secret. After playing hard ball, in a very telling moment, Shiv asks her godmother for some marital advice, and Gerri nonchalantly replies, “I don’t know, I was never very good at all that. My husband died.” Followed by a shrug: “Don’t let him die?”
Everything you need to know about Gerri, everything there is to admire about Gerri, is right there. She is clearly central enough at Waystar Royco to be someone who could actually make Shiv’s requests happen, but moreover, Shiv trusts Gerri—not only to witness Shiv’s attempt at joining the big kids’ table, but also to hear Shiv’s more vulnerable question regarding the marriage that she sort of haphazardly agreed to. And Gerri—Succession’s embodiment of “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss”—gives the most blasé answer she possibly can, hilariously unhelpful in the face of Shiv’s appeal for help or a modicum of maternal care.
Gerri has always been a formidable force within Waystar Royco. Earlier in the series, particularly in its first two seasons, Gerri was the Succession player to beat: She had Logan’s complete trust, and she had everyone else at the company—especially Roman, whom she nearly succeeded in grooming into the most capable Roy sibling—in the palm of her hand. She steered Waystar through the shitstorm that was the Department of Justice case without needing so much as a janky umbrella. Logan couldn’t get rid of her; he was too busy dying to see her firing through. Gerri even managed to evade Matsson’s proposed kill list. Waystar would have sunk, multiple times, without Gerri. But my favorite thing about her is how unapologetic she is about doing what she needs to do to get ahead, which has resulted in this steely resolve that leaves her shrugging at her former husband’s death, rolling her eyes as Roman makes her a springboard for his juvenile sexual fantasies, and weaseling her way into the Waystar Royco Hall of Fame—maybe, depending on how the finale shakes out, even the top spot. —Nadira Goffe, associate writer
Eduard Asgarov
The Azerbaijani oligarch played by Babak Tafti, clearly meant to be a fictional counterpart of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (aka MBS), sets the stage for some of Season 2’s most harrowing, absurd, darkly hilarious subplots: Roman’s “I want to lick your neck” courtship, the Hearts soccer team fiasco, and most memorably, the terrorist siege on the Turkish hotel where Roman, Karl, and Jamie Laird meet with Asgarov to talk a potential Waystar Royco deal. That thrilling sequence brings out parts of these characters we rarely see (remember Karl’s visible fear?), allowing Roman to demonstrate some surprising canniness as he negotiates a way out of the situation. Honestly, I wish Asgarov had been on the show just a little bit more. —Nitish Pahwa, associate writer
Willa Roy née Ferreyra
Willa (Justine Lupe) is perhaps the single Succession character who most successfully achieves that contemporary feminist goal of securing the bag over all else. Her sociopolitical glow up—from an escort servicing the eldest (and silliest) son of an incredibly rich and powerful family, to political wife and (deeply unserious) potential first lady—is nothing short of inspirational. Willa made a conscious choice to marry Connor Roy, knowing full well everything that he is and isn’t, as well as everything that she could gain from that union. She read the field well and allied herself with the most innocuous Roy, and now will likely spend her days jet-setting in luxury as Connor chases his various flights of fancy, secure and comforted by the wealth that she has certainly worked to obtain. (Don’t be fooled: Being with Connor and continuing to support him when he says things like, “It’s obviously not an item of interest to serious scholars, but as a curio, sure” in reference to buying Napoleon’s shriveled penis, is work.) From her looks of unsurprised displeasure when dealing with Connor’s tomfoolery, to her failed play, Sands, that wrought one of Connor’s best lines in the show (“You’ll have to talk to the sand supplier like everyone else”), all of Willa’s hilarity will be missed. —NG
Nan Pierce
Logan Roy’s liberal counterpart presents more as an eccentric dowager than a corporate wolverine, pretending to be flummoxed and dismayed by the whole capitalism thing. After luring the Roy children into a bidding war against their father for ownership of her left-leaning media empire, Nan Pierce feigns ignorance as the sales price climbs by the billions: “Eight, 9, what’s next?” But Cherry Jones lets us see the steel inside the rumpled shirts, the way that soft power can be just as indomitable as open hostility. She’s just as cold-blooded as Logan is, and doesn’t need to get her hands dirty to lay her opponents low. —SA
Naomi Pierce
We first meet Naomi Pierce (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) in “Tern Haven,” one of Succession’s best episodes. She is part of what makes that episode a standout. By that point, the Roy children are our only models for the show’s rich, spoiled media scions. Naomi represents something different from the Roys—and something different from the other Pierces. While everyone else seems to have been doing all they can to win their biggest piece of the family pie, she’s been off elsewhere, away from all this mess, alternating between partying and getting sober. She’s a traumatized addict like Kendall, but unlike him, she’s not desperate to knife her siblings or cousins for control of the family biz. Yet her electric connection with Kendall makes sense: How often does a fragile, 0.1 percenter nepo baby with addiction issues come across another fragile, 0.1 percenter nepo baby with addiction issues? In their shared demons and seemingly diametric approaches to their families, they make perfect foils. In the Season 2 finale, Naomi also tells Kendall one of the truest things that anyone has ever said to him about Logan: “Daddy loves the broken you. That’s what he loves.” The patricidal mission that Kendall embarks on next gave me hope that Naomi could finally, lord help us, fix him—that she could push him to do the only thing that could plausibly save his mind and soul: to finally separate his own ambitions from his father’s.
But then … Season 3 happens. Naomi is most often seen but not heard, slinking around Kendall as he self-immolates, brashly drinking Rava’s wine, a seeming enabler of Kendall’s megalomania, rather than someone who pushes him—or herself—toward any kind of peace. Watching those episodes, it was often hard to believe that she was even the same character. Perhaps the idea was that the couple fell fully back off the wagon together, allowing each other to revert to their most base selves. But in Naomi’s biggest Season 3 scene, their fight at Kendall’s 40th birthday party is not over their fraught family relationships or their wealth or their addictions—it’s over her disappointing gift, a watch, the same impersonal offering that Tom gave Logan in the series premiere. The actors and dialogue are strong enough to carry us through the emotions of the scene, but being disappointed with a birthday gift is a breaking point that Kendall could have had with any partner. It’s weirdly nonspecific, like Naomi is a prop for Kendall’s story—an afterthought. Treating people, especially women, like an afterthought makes sense coming from any Roy—but much less so coming from this show’s incredible writers.
I was glad to see Naomi resurface in Season 4. She seems more put together, more sober, and interestingly, more at the center of the family business: Pierce Global Media is selling again, and she’s back to help. Rather than getting fully out of it like she and Kendall had dreamed, she’s seemingly gotten deeper into her own family drama as Nan’s right-hand woman. Naomi was initially so intriguing because she represented a billionaire-scion path to liberation that all of these fucked-up kids, Kendall most of all, need to deal with their mountains of family trauma: an escape. An escape from their father, from their family’s empire, and from the psychodramas that control them—to live a life, far away from all of it, that they can finally call their own. —Seth Maxon, senior editor
Karolina Novotney
Here are a few reasons I loved Karolina: First, Dagmara Dominczyk’s timbre is just absolutely soothing in a show with a lot of sharp, squeaky voices. (Hello, Roman!) Secondly, she exudes calm; this woman appears to separate work from life in a way no one else on the series does—she is there to get things done. Third, she’s extremely competent and clear. People may have been shocked when she immediately thought about comms after Logan died, but that is her actual job! I would hire her in a heartbeat, and respect her boundaries. —Hillary Frey, editor in chief
Stewy Hosseini
There is so much to be said about Stewy Hosseini’s essential role in the evolution of Waystar Royco as a business, given his role as a clearly influential member of the board. There’s also so much to be said about how the fraught, longtime frenemy dynamic between Kendall and Stewy may have either secured the crown for Kendall or foiled his plans entirely (we’ll find out soon enough). But frankly? I still don’t really understand Stewy’s role here. What exactly does he … do? I could not tell you! Nevertheless, I do appreciate his great sense of style, suave demeanor, and mean-spirited, well-warranted skepticism of the possibility of any of the Roy kids succeeding Logan. That, and Arian Moayed is very handsome—perhaps the most handsome man on the show. I will miss admiring his gorgeous beard. —MD
Tabitha
The deranged world of Succession requires its major players to say so many heinous things: Twitterified Holocaust jokes, gleefully misogynist comments, and countless incest digs. But no one delivered their disgusting little lines with more charm and delight than Caitlin Fitzgerald’s Tabitha. I’ll never forget how proudly she declared to a table full of media royalty that she and ostensible boyfriend Roman never have sex, as she snuggled up to him and enshrined their relationship as one between “eunuch besties.” I also often think back on the moment when she instantly whipped her phone out to immortalize Kendall’s “L to the OG” rap, vocalizing what we all were thinking: “It is burning my eyes but I cannot look away!” With her bubbly voice, comically teased-up wedding hair, and crucial role at Tom’s bachelor party (it’s NSFW to explain that one), Tabitha was a beautiful, towering giraffe of a woman. I’ll miss her and her crass indifference to ultra-rich-people niceties dearly. —MD
Rava Roy
Like Jess, Rava (Natalie Gold) is someone who both loves Kendall and is fed up with him. From the beginning, Rava has tried to shield her kids from the vortex of the Roy family—but she only really succeeds when she finally gives up on trying to shield Kendall, too. She has always put her children first, even when that means calling out the Roys on their bullshit. In a show full of severely fucked-up parents, it’s nice to have at least one example of a parent who who will protect her children to the bitter end. —NG
Colin
Oh Colin, you surname-less, glowering secret keeper and all-purpose heavy, we will miss you!
He was the one person whose affection—if we can call it that—for Logan Roy seemed vaguely pure. Always slightly out of place with these monsters, but still willing to do their bidding.
Will Colin squeal on Kendall now that the quasi-eldest Roy is moving into pole position? Or will he stuff those feelings deep down inside (he does seem Irish, and that’s how we do it) and accept the hush money? Honestly, man, take the cash and walk away. Secure the bag, get a nice house upstate, and find someone with whom to talk about the afterlife in a diner. Someone who doesn’t involve you in a waiter murder. —Lizzie O’Leary, host of What Next: TBD
Jess Jordan
Succession doesn’t have many nonwhite characters, let alone nonwhite women, but the few that we do get are mostly stellar. Jess (Juliana Canfield) has been by Kendall’s side since the beginning. She represents the experience of so many Black women in these predominantly male, white spaces—women in cold, hard rooms that were made to exclude them. She’s expected to be nothing less than supportive, but her bafflement at the chicanery and frivolity going on around her frequently plays out on her face and in her hurried and oft-confused responses to Kendall’s ridiculous requests. She’s been a constant on this series, someone to whom we can look to validate our refrains of, “Is it just me, or is this batshit?”
But despite her constant bemusement at her boss’s antics, Jess earnestly feels compassion and caring for Kendall. When she finally quits after so many years of being Kendall’s thankless lapdog—and when she stands firm in it as Kendall calls her “dumb”—there’s a feeling of immense release. Take those two weeks and go on a nice vacation, Jess. You deserve it. —NG
Lukas Matsson
I hesitate to classify Lukas Matsson a “minor” character when he has so dominated the final two seasons of the series, both as a driver of the plot and as a sheer force of personality. Of all the A-list talent that Succession has wheedled onto its set—hi, two-episode wonder Adrien Brody—Alexander Skarsgård has slotted himself in the most seamlessly, carving out a comfortable perch for a character who is by turns puckish yet menacing, savvy yet moronic, odious yet kinda hot (a Skarsgård signature). Privacy, pussy, pasta, indeed. —JGZ
Oskar Gudjohnsen
Of the Swedes, Oskar (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) is my favorite—and that’s saying something, given my crush on Alexander Skarsgård since his True Blood days. First: Oskar’s beard and mustache are immaculate. Second: His animosity toward Greg—describing him as “two meters of pure nepotism” and an “inbred Habsburg giant”—is one of the funniest running gags of this final season. He also blows vape smoke in Greg’s face and calls him a “fucking dingleberry” (the best insult), simply because Greg was saying hello. I will miss this well-manicured, Greg-hating Swede. —NG
Rhea Jarrell
As a tiny boss lady, I am always very excited when another tiny boss lady shows up on TV. And Rhea Jarrell is played by the best tiny boss lady actor ever: Holly Hunter. It may have been just me who saw a connection between Hunter’s ambitious, anxious, emotional Jane Craig from the most excellent Broadcast News and her mature-flirty, deal-making media boss Jarrell on Succession, but I couldn’t help but think that Craig had somehow grown over the last 35-odd years into a different kind of producer, one behind even bigger scenes than William Hurt’s nightly broadcasts, one engineering world-changing mergers. In this role, Hunter traded taxicabs for private helicopters, but she still showed the same mischief in her half-smile, and looked great in turtlenecks, to boot. I was disappointed that she pretty much whiffed it all at the end. —HF
Hugo Baker
Hugo is the ideal underling: He is ambitious, avaricious, just capable enough, and, best of all, is apparently unburdened by any ethical qualms or the pesky matter of dignity. Every tyrant needs a faithful attack dog, and in the slightly unsavory, always grasping Hugo—played with obvious relish by Fisher Stevens—Kendall finally finds his. —JGZ
Ewan Roy
The closest thing Succession has to a character with a moral compass: Ewan Roy (a true-to-life James Cromwell), the grizzled, idealistic older brother of a far-right media tycoon, and a concerned grandfather who can only watch as Greg delves deeper into the family swamp of naked ambition and poison peddling that Ewan wanted so badly for him to avoid. Not that Ewan’s clean, of course—he shows up to Logan’s myriad events and all but expresses his continued loyalty, and he has come to terms with the fact that he can make those hefty Greenpeace donations thanks to his Waystar Royco investments.
One of Succession’s strengths is using Ewan sparingly: having him show up for key moments of tension without laying it on too thick. That’s what makes his funeral monologue—recounting their childhood history, their hardships, and Logan’s ultimate evil—all the more stunning. When Ewan declares, “I loved him, I suppose,” you believe it as much as you believe his disdain for what Logan hath wrought upon the world. —NP
Gil Eavis
As the series comes to a close, it’s almost quaint to recall how there could’ve been an alternate timeline in which Shiv Roy (SHIV FUCKING ROY!) steered a democratic socialist into the White House. That democratic socialist was, of course, Gil Eavis, a senator from the great state of Succession-verse Pennsylvania, and leading member of Succession-verse Congress’ committee on commerce, science, and transportation. Eric Bogosian’s Gil is a fantasy of D.C. competence, between his spritely age of 70 and his righteous evisceration of Tom during the hearings on sexual abuse in the cruises department of Waystar Royco. Though he only appears in seven episodes across the show’s four seasons, Gil’s indelible delivery of “you can’t make a Tomelette without breaking some Greggs” earned him an unbeatable spot in my personal ranking of best Succession lines ever. —MD
Brian
Probably the series’ biggest missed opportunity was the decision to not revisit Brian (Zach Cherry), Roman’s partner from the amusement park management training in Season 2. I’d watch each episode half expecting it to end with a scene with the Roy kids walking into their dad’s office. The camera would show a chair behind Logan’s desk, but the chair would be turned around so you can only see the back. The kids would be fighting over who gets to inherit the business. The bickering would peak with one or more Roys saying, “Dad! Dad?” Then the chair would swivel around, and it would Brian sitting there. “I gave the company to Brian!” Logan, standing off to the side, would laugh. (Obviously, this would have been sometime before he died.)
My only hope is that Succession will be revealed to share the same universe as Apple TV+’s Severance, Brian will turn out to be Dylan’s daytime alter ego, and he will then recruit the Roys to plot a corporate takeover of Lumon Industries. —Rob Gunther, senior producer for What Next
Lisa Arthur
Lisa Arthur (Sanaa Lathan), Kendall’s lawyer amid the DOJ battle in Season 3, is one of Succession’s all-time best recurring characters. It’s nice to see a Black female character act as the dominant force in an all-white, predominantly male environment. She is introduced as not just one of the most effective attorneys around, but also as Shiv’s old pal. But Lisa seems to be acutely aware of the fact that there is more separating her from Shiv than there is aligning them. She knows that Shiv and the other Roys will try to exploit a connection with her—not only for her competence and legal prowess, but also because it makes them feel good to have a Black female friend. Lisa never lets Shiv, who perhaps overestimated their friendship, manipulate or jerk her around—she knows that Shiv’s feminism is a façade, and she doesn’t have to side with Shiv just because they’re both women.
Lisa’s final appearances in the series are a master class in how Black women like her earn their reputations. She is tactful but firm with Kendall, leaving no room for bullshit but just enough leeway to maintain her approachable demeanor, resulting in one of the show’s best lines: “I don’t do requests because I’m not a DJ, but I hear you.” When she calls Kendall out for believing that he’s smarter than her—“Maybe you are, but I’m a better lawyer”—she becomes one of the few people who has not only rejected one Roy, but full-on called out another. That gumption explains her short tenure as Kendall’s lawyer: She’s too good, too unapologetic, and too badass to be belittled or defied. In the end, her agency shows just how fragile all of the Roys’ precious, rich, white egos. —NG
Lawrence Yee
I have to send my love and regards to Succession’s only canonically queer character, the utterly doomed Lawrence Yee (Rob Yang). His BuzzFeed-esque content mill Vaulter never stood a chance once Kendall decided to make it his pet project for impressing Daddy. Lawrence talked a big game about how he’d defend his company, but Logan had Waystar Royco swallow them whole (not unlike how nonfictional billionaires have eaten alive actual news organizations). Lawrence, I feel a particular kinship with you as a fellow blogging gay, and I’m so bummed that I’ll never be able to read your website’s Pultizer-worthy post: “Wait, Is Every Taylor Swift Lyric Secretly Marxist?” —MD
Kerry Castellabate
It’s my honor and privilege to say goodbye to one of Succession’s most momentous minor characters, Kerry. Kerry, who focused so intently on her dream that she cast away all self-respect while conducting her duties as Logan’s associate, assistant, adviser, and friend. Kerry, who we didn’t know had the capacity to crack until the glass was coming down on top of her. Zoë Winters’ portrayal of shock is one of the most gutting performances of grief on the series: paralysis, between gulps of hysteria. The worst possible outcome happening right in front of you.
We initially knew Kerry as, to put it in impolite terms, the shameless chief slut. She comes in as filler, worming her way in between Logan and Marcia after Rhea, and she dressed the part. Kerry is the show’s only representation of the “Fox News Girl” archetype—that intersection of studio styling and the trick of psychology that equates hotness and intelligence—that we have the opportunity to see up close, to understand, and to dissect.
At Logan’s funeral, we’re given the most humanized Kerry to date. Who is this weirdly hot brother supporting her while she faces all of these people who hate her? Why would she even bother going? Did anyone stop to consider the grief of this career-striving, power-hungry, so-called slut? Through it all, Kerry proves herself to be defiantly human—and without her, we would never have received the gift of the most iconic funeral front row of the season. —Ellin Youse, editor of Slate Plus
Frank Vernon
Karl and Frank are Succession’s Statler and Waldorf, two grumbling old men who are just kind of there the whole time, so it surprised me when I recently realized that I actually feel very differently about the two. Karl is funny, and obviously I respect what he did with cable in the ’90s, but at the end of the day we can all agree that he’s kind of a pompous dick, yeah? Frank, though … What is this strange reserve of affection I have for Frank (Peter Friedman)? Perhaps it merely stems from the fact that I’ve always had a soft spot for Kendall (in internet parlance, Kendall is babygirl). Kendall has looked to Frank as a father figure throughout the show, so by the transitive property, I guess that makes Frank babygirldad. As a piece in Primetimer puts it, “Kendall’s fondness for Frank is funny, because nobody else seems to like Logan’s former advisor all that much.” I sort of love this about Frank, too. He’s hapless: He was fired by Logan several times over the last few years—and, nevertheless, he persists. Whatever happens with the company, I hope Frank gets out of that racket and retires soon. I can see him taking up some hobbies, maybe even finding peace. —Heather Schwedel, staff writer
Bridget (aka “Ludicrously Capacious Bag” Girl)
Here’s to Bridget (Francesca Root-Dodson), Greg’s random date who famously brings the ludicrously capacious bag—an almost $3,000 Burberry number—to Logan’s birthday party. “What’s even in there, huh? Flat shoes for the subway?” Tom mocks, but who among us hasn’t wished we had brought a bigger bag to carry a pair of comfortable sandals to slip into for the commute home?
Tom continues: “Her lunch pail?” Well, who among us hasn’t hoarded a snack or two (or three) for when hunger strikes at inopportune times?
“It’s gargantuan. You could take it camping. You could slide it across the floor after a bank job.” Maybe she will, and good for her!
Simply put, Bridget is winning: She got invited to a swanky party and even managed to sneak in some action in the guest bedroom. Though it’s safe to say she won’t be invited back to any Roy function ever again, at least she will have her flats for the subway. —NG
