Jesse Armstrong

They were like, "It's the Murdochs." You know?

Well, you have insight into them, but it is a soap opera with- And also when you hire Jesse Armstrong, you have-- you understand that there's going to be a political and comedic point of view brought to it.

Sure.

Um, I think that th- having this much of our entertainment valorizing the 1% and that idea of there being some sort of interesting aspect to how deeply fucked we are--

Yeah.

You might have been there when he's been in the audience, but Jesse Armstrong, the guy that created Succession, he comes to ABC a fair bit.

And just to tie it into the Oscar thing, there are times where he's in the crowd and there's a little part of me that's like, if this gig goes well...

LAUGHTER You know, me and Jesse in our tuxedos hugging.

Doesn't she? Like, she's very copped on and she's not getting, you know, swept away with any kind of, like...

idea that everyone loves her fame or anything like she just seems so normal

yeah um she's got good you're right if jesse armstrong was in the crowd she's not thinking i'm gonna win the oscar

she doesn't post videos of herself singing online

I'm going London, Oxford, Bath, Birmingham, Brighton.

Oh, I'm doing it with Jesse Armstrong in Brighton.

Oh.

I'm very excited.

Hilton, for the stay.

I wanted to ask about this experience compared to Mountainhead, and you were sort of comparing them already, but I imagine that Mountainhead was very precisely scripted the way Jesse Armstrong writes Succession and wrote that movie.

Is that true, or was there similar room to play around in that film?

I think there was a little bit of room to play around, but I think we all realized very quickly that what Jesse was writing or would propose as alternates was always infinitely better than anything we were going to sort of do on the fly.

Yeah.

And again, there's a very, very consistent standard written by, of course, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong.

Jesse Armstrong later of Succession fame.

Yep.

But this is the show that made their name and clearly a classic.