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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. After four seasons and seemingly endless string of backstabbing and F-bombs, the series finale of HBO's Succession arrives this Sunday. Averaging close to 8 million viewers each week, people have tuned in for an answer to the question that's been at the crux of the drama from the start, who will succeed Logan Roy as head of the Media Empire Waystar Royco? This Sunday, we expect to find out. Now at this point, a warning for you team All Of It listeners, there are going to be spoilers ahead starting now. Consider this fair warning.

In the show's penultimate episode, it's Logan Roy's funeral attended by some of the biggest power players in the world, including the presumptive president of the United States, but the mourner, who was most anticipated in last Sunday's episode was the least powerful of the group. That was Logan's former assistant turned closest confidant, and possibly, maybe definitely mistress, Kerry, who has been played by our next guest, OBIE Award-winning actor Zoe Winters.

Next week after the finale, as part of our watch party series, we're going to be joined by Jay Smith Cameron, another actor who plays an influential woman in Logan Roy's orbit, Waystars General Counsel Jerry. Yes, we are serving up a Succession sandwich. To help set us up for the finale, Zoe Winters joins me for a watch party preview. Zoe, it's so nice to meet you.

Zoe Winters: So nice to meet you too. Thanks so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, are you a Succession fan? Do you have questions for Zoe Winters who plays Kerry? Any thoughts on her character's trajectory or any predictions of how the series will end this Sunday? Our phone lines are open, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or you can hit us up on social media @AllOfItWNYC. Kerry first appeared in the second season about episode seven or so. What did you know about the part when you originally auditioned for it?

Zoe Winters: I didn't know terribly too much around her backstory or anything around her trajectory but for myself, I knew obviously that she was coming in as his assistant. Where I started from with her was that she was joining this company at the height of a sexual misconduct scandal and they were heading into these congressional hearings over the Waystar cruises.

That, for me, I didn't know if there was ever going to be any real estate in order to express her political standings or her views ,but I thought, "Who joins a company at that point? Who joins that company to begin with and who joins that company at that point?" I felt right from the beginning that she had terrifying politics, and I used that as a starting place of building the spine of who I thought she was.

Alison Stewart: When did it become clear that Kerry was going to be playing more than just an adjacent background role?

Zoe Winters: I came in season three. It was clear to me in season three that they were playing with, an idea of how intimate her relationship with Logan was. I didn't know how that was going to be explored, and I didn't know what the audience was going to receive. I definitely had my views on it and had my take on it.

One of the things that's so successful about the writing of this show is just the lack of exposition and little hand-holding that these writers do. They're never showing you anything excessive or anything that you shouldn't need to see. It was all a little opaque and I liked that. I've resisted talking about it but I definitely do have a sense of how deeply connected they were.

Alison Stewart: We think we found one of the first clips of dialogue that Kerry has on this show. This is the Waystar team is doing damage control over those sexual misconduct allegations and a potential takeover bid. Logan speaks first.

Logan: Kerry, we can fix it, right? You can reshuffle the Dundee stuff?

Kerry: About the journalism wing? Yes, I'm sure they'll come to you. Straight to Singapore, Christchurch, do it that way.

Logan: I need to make some calls. Kerry, we're hunkering. Frank. Jerry, let's get down to it. It's going to be an all-nighter.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because Kerry, she takes on some of the bravado of Logan. She starts to carry herself a little bit like Logan. Her walk changes a little bit. She starts bossing the Roy kids around as time goes on. What allows Kerry to assume this position?

Zoe Winters: Also going back to that clip, I have to revisit things in order to exactly remember but there was also some interesting thing going on between him and Raya at that point, played by Holly Hunter. Kerry was in on that and maybe helping him to arrange some sort of travel, and doing it in a way where she kept something in a public setting. The rest of his team is in the room and I remember looking at him and keeping that private and not giving any sort of an opinion about it, but just saying, "We could do this." I felt like that was an insight into her too, that she never passed judgment on people partly because she probably is terrifying.

[laughter]

In answer to your other question, I think that one thing I was interested in exploring coming into this around your question of where does she get this bravado and where does she get this courage around speaking up is, I was interested-- I would never work at this company but if I were to work at this company, I think I would just come in the room and deliver the news and get out of there as fast as I could. That would be the kind of assistant that I would be in this company. I was interested in an assistant who inserted herself where she wasn't welcome. I was like, "So much of this show, there's obviously the main characters but everyone else is fully fleshed out."

The combination of the acting and the directing and the writing makes everyone so fully alive so that when you do get those reaction shots or when the camera does land on somebody who isn't necessarily running the scene, you still feel a full sense of their point of view. I wanted her to have that. I thought, "What if she inserts herself? What if she does the opposite of what I would do if I were an assistant? What if she starts speaking up?"

Then as far as her bravado, I think that in the reading that I've done around these media conglomerates and families, that there's a certain fandom culture around rallying around the CEO and this mentality of fandom. I wanted her to be a fan of his. I think that lent her some courage too of stepping in and saying what she thought because she believed in him.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Zoe Winter. She plays Kerry in Succession. The series finale is this Sunday. We have a question for you, Julie, from Great Neck, New York. Hi Julie. Thanks for calling All Of It. You're on with Zoe.

Julie: Hi, good afternoon. Zoe, I just want to say I love your character. I love how you talk to Roman and all the characters. My question is who do you think is going to be the CEO of Waystar now that Logan Roy has died?

Zoe Winters: Oh, I'll never even tell you what I think, but it's interesting. I'm excited. I'm excited to see.

Alison Stewart: Do you have another question, Julie?

Julie: Yes. How is it working with this incredible cast, and how do you feel about the series ending?

Zoe Winters: This is an incredible job. It's just a dream job. I think that I don't take for granted what this opportunity has been to land in a place where everyone is operating at the top of their talent in this kind of way. There's a lot of theater actors on this show as well. That's been hugely satisfying for me to land in a room. Sometimes you've heard Mark Mylod, I'm sure read about him talking about the way that they shoot a lot of episodes and they shoot these huge sweeping pages of texts. Sometimes it feels almost like you're filming a one-act play and that's really my background. Being on set and working with these actors has just been the best experience.

I'm really sad. I'm really sad to not have this job. I'm trying to just be grateful and appreciate that I had this opportunity and I really am grateful for it. I'm also definitely sad that it's ending but I really respect the artistic integrity of-- Jesse's always been driven around this is how the story goes. It's always been about story. This is where the story came to. I respect that. I respect that they listened to the story.

Alison Stewart: You can tell that you're a stage actor. I think I saw you in the public theaters in White Noise.

Zoe Winters: Oh. yes. Suzan-Lori Parks. Amazing.

Alison Stewart: It was an amazing show. My guest is Zoe Winters. She plays Kerry and Succession. Series finale is this Sunday. If you are a Succession fan, you have a question for Zoe, o Our phone lines are open. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 is our phone number.

Kerry's fortunes, they obviously turn when Logan dies but there's this moment before that when there's a little bit of foreshadowing that things aren't going to go so well or maybe she's overstepped a little bit. She's decided she wants to be an anchor for ATN. She does this anchor tape which is a wow.

Zoe Winters: Great, right? You loved it. What you're saying is you loved it?

Alison Stewart: Tell me a little bit about recording an audition, which you know has to be bad.

Zoe Winters: Becky Martin directed that episode and she is wildly funny. It was great fun. I didn't want it to be so bad that we were commenting on the joke, which also the writers and the directors are so careful about never doing anything too broad. I was aware of not making it too broad. I wanted her to still be inside of it, but to just be flailing in some way. I got these pages and then I did some research and just looked at political presenters, and had this kind of idea of this stentorian hysterical Fox News presentation in my mind, but didn't want to go too excessively with it. Yes, I just had a lot of fun.

First of all, I think that she thinks it's a formality. I think that she thinks she was a shoo-in. There's this big deal going on, and then he's been able to spin off ATN and so I think that she thinks, all right, this is where I can land. Kerry, obviously, she's after money and security but I think really what she wants is a voice, and she wants power in that sense. She wants to have some ownership over the international stage and the political conversation, especially as this momentous election is about to happen. I think that they had had a conversation where he had granted it to her, so I think she saw this audition as a chore.

Then I think she was doing it-- I think that women, in general, have a pressure to be charming. I think that obviously if you're in a media presence, you have even more so. I think what we're watching here is I don't think Kerry's interested in charm, which is one of the few things I like about her is that she doesn't care about being charming. I think what we see here is she's in this bright pink dress and her hair's teased up and she's got this big grin on her face, and I think she's trying to show you her idea of charm, and instead, it's a little scary and an unsettling.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about that smile. When Kerry is stressed, she has this suit. It happens during the audition, it happens on the plane when she's talking about-- Logan said she has a super creepy smile. Tell me about the development of the smile.

Zoe Winters: Well, I felt like right from the beginning when Kerry came in, she was so passive-aggressive with people, and I felt like smiling was one of my ways to do that. That was something that I felt could be one of the things that marked her character, was just that she smiled at certain points. Whenever she's delivering some bad news, she'll just give you a little smile just to make it hurt all the more.

Then in the plane scene, she's so shocked. I think that shock comes out in strange ways. I've definitely experienced loss and I think that unbelievably, there's moments of levity and absurdity and it's so unbelievably difficult to process that. I think any way in which feeling comes out is believable. That episode is so incredible, Episode 3. I love that these writers can hold space for unbelievable deep grief, and then also moments of humor inside of loss, because I think that's how loss manifests, is in all of those ways.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear a clip from that particular scene when Logan has died on the plane. This is Zoe Winters as Kerry in Succession.

Kerry: That's [beep] crazy, right?

Speaker 2: It is [unintelligible 00:14:41]

Kerry: Whoa, that's so [beep] Jesus, wow. You guys okay?

Speaker 2: We're good. Thank you.

Speaker 3: Kerry.

Kerry: Yeah.

Speaker 3: If it's all right with you, we're just using this space to coordinate a response to, you know, if we need to send out a-- Do you mind if-- Is that okay if we--?

Kerry: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Do you want me to have to--?

Kerry: Oh, no, no. That's so kind.

Speaker 3: But you're in shock. I think you should go back there and we'l make you comfortable, and we'll bring you whatever you need.

Kerry: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Okay, so do you want me to be [unintelligible 00:15:28] or the responses?

Speaker 4: Doing great, Kerry. Why don't you rest up in there, let us get our ducks in a row, and we'll get you ready?

Kerry: Okay.

Speaker 4: Okay?

Kerry: Okay. I'm going to be back over there.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Kerry, in the last episode, she gets to sit, she's brought upfront, people have to watch why, she's brought up front to sit with Logan's other women in Logan's life. Did that make sense to you?

Zoe Winters: Yes, I think in the previous episode that we see her on 403 when she is this-- It's from my perspective, so I might have digested it more painfully than others, but is so publicly shamed and taken out the back door and everyone in that episode is trying to figure out where they land after this Titan has--

Alison Stewart: Oh, I think Zoe's Zoom has frozen. I think we're going to have to wrap. Zoe Winters has been our guest. She plays Kerry in Succession. The series finale is this Sunday. We thank Zoe for being with us. I'm sorry we have a tough connection, but Zoe, thank you so much.

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