With Succession Sundays now behind us, what’s a viewing public obsessed with the corporate machinations of the über-rich to do? Well, you can wait for season three of Industry – that should arrive at some point next year – or you can just hitch your wagon to Succession’s stars and see where they go next. From classic theatre roles to horror films, here’s a look at what’s to come for the former Waystar Royco set.
Nicholas Braun
Once the tween-heartthrob star of 2005’s Sky High, Nicholas Braun has followed his run as Succession’s bumbling (but maybe brilliant?) Cousin Greg with a lead turn in Susanna Fogel’s Cat Person – based on the viral New Yorker story of the same name – opposite Emilia Jones (CODA). It screened at Sundance in January, with an official release date still to be announced.
J Smith-Cameron
J Smith-Cameron has made a spate of interesting film and television appearances over the last year, including in Fleishman Is In Trouble (as Toby’s somewhat distractible attorney), BJ Novak’s Vengeance, and Alex Heller’s indie family drama The Year Between. Still to come are supporting turns in Turtles All the Way Down – director Hannah Marks’s adaptation of the John Green novel – and voice work in the animated comedy In the Know. Speaking to Vogue earlier this year, Smith-Cameron also expressed interest in trying a Jessica Fletcher-type on for size. “I’d love to play a detective who’s putting pieces together, and it’s disarming because they don’t seem like a detective,” she said. “They seem like someone’s aunt or something; a nice lady in glasses.”
Juliana Canfield
Was any Succession character more shouted-for than Jess Jordan? Her absence was so acutely felt in the finale that her replacement was simply known as “New Jess”. Canfield has been in deep for this role – apparently Jeremy Strong even gave her homework (offscreen!) that she was meant to complete in preparation. Canfield and Zoë Winters, who played Logan’s assistant-turned-much-more-than-that, Kerry Castellabate, have even spoken about a spinoff show centred on the Succession assistants – we can hope! Canfield, who, after graduating from the Yale School of Drama in 2017, came up in the New York theatre scene, is set to star in Everlasting Yea!, a historical drama written by Lynn Nottage. She’ll play Ellen Craft, a Black woman who made her way to freedom in antebellum America and then became something of a celebrity during the Abolitionist movement.
Brian Cox
A fixture of the stage and screen since the late 1960s, Brian Cox has never lacked for fascinating roles, however minor – please recall this scene from Adaptation – and he certainly won’t post-Succession. Cox’s IMDB page identifies nine upcoming projects in the next year or so, from a James Bond-themed competition series to a Lord of the Rings prequel and a mysterious comedy costarring Jennifer Coolidge, Dustin Hoffman, and Gabrielle Union. But perhaps most compelling (and apropos) is the news that he’ll appear as James Tyrone in a rather starry West End production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night next year, with Patricia Clarkson as Mary; Alex Lawther as Edmund; and Daryl McCormack as James Jr.
Matthew Macfadyen
After an arc that saw Tom Wambsgans’s endless wheeling, dealing, and singing for his supper actually pay some real dividends, Matthew Macfadyen has emerged as something of a series breakout. Once everyone’s second-favourite Mr Darcy, he’s starred opposite Julia Garner in The Assistant (2019), opposite Fleabag’s Sian Clifford in the miniseries Quiz (2020), and opposite his wife, Keeley Hawes, in Stonehouse. On the way? Roles in 2024’s Deadpool 3 and a Prime Video thriller called Holland, Michigan, with Nicole Kidman and Rachel Sennott.
Arian Moayed
Iranian-American actor Arian Moayed – Succession’s Stewy – was recently seen making similarly sinister moves as Torvald Helmer in the Jessica Chastain-starring Broadway production of A Doll’s House, though that role involved a lot less behind-the-scenes scheming, and a lot more explicit control. He also has a role in one of the summer’s most anticipated indie films, Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings. Maybe more intelligent rom-com work is in the offing? “Jessica and I, we’re both like, ‘We should do a romantic comedy together,’” he told The New York Times this month.
Alexander Skarsgård
Our favourite Nordic anti-hero recently starred in what one Vogue writer deemed “the most messed up horror film of 2023” – so consider his term as GoJo’s freaky founder to be building upon a long list of unlikable yet compelling roles (abusive husband Perry Wright in Big Little Lies; the racist husband in Passing). This fall he will be in Lee – the highly anticipated biopic of the journalist and Man Ray muse Lee Miller, starring Kate Winslet – a project that has been in the works for years. And last autumn it was announced that he will reunite with his The Little Drummer Girl costar Florence Pugh in a thriller called The Pack, about a group of intrepid scientists trying to save a species of wolves teetering on the brink of extinction.
Sarah Snook
First up is probably a bit of time off for Sarah Snook, who apparently gave birth in the weeks (days?) before the finale. (Look at that cute baby head watching the final episode!) But in June the Australian actor stars in Run Rabbit Run, a psychological thriller, streaming on Netflix, about a woman whose daughter seems to be channelling the spirit of her mother’s long-dead sister. Later in the summer, she stars in The Beanie Bubble, a film about – of all things – the Beanie Babies craze of the ’90s (if Greta Gerwig can make a movie about Barbie…) starring Elizabeth Banks and Zach Galifianakis.
Jeremy Strong
After years of steady supporting work in the likes of Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, The Good Wife, and Masters of Sex, Jeremy Strong made rather higher-profile appearances in 2020’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 and 2022’s Armageddon Time. Just earlier this month, however, it was announced that Strong would lead a new staging of Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People, directed by Sam Gold and adapted by his wife, playwright Amy Herzog, in the spring of 2024.
Harriet Walter
Harriet Walter, aka WAG extraordinaire Lady Caroline Collingwood, made a blessed appearance in the series finale, treating her children to frozen nobbies (that’s bread ends to the uninitiated) and warning them not to eat her husband’s cheese. The theatre veteran is next set to appear in the role of Cary Grant’s mother in the Grant biopic/series Archie. If that unscheduled show is too long a wait, fans can also catch her on the dystopian TV show Silo.
