It’s Official: James Murdoch is Kendall Roy
The Murdoch son’s new tell-all in the NYTimes confirms that the ‘Succession’ writers really did their research.
NB: Spoilers below.
This week, The New York Times’ exclusive interview with Rupert Murdoch’s hip-hop loving, sensitive, progressive* second son is listed with the title ‘Which Succession character is James Murdoch?’
The final scene of Succession’s second series has Kendall Roy — world-bending media mogul Logan Roy’s hip-hop loving, sensitive, progressive* second son — finally dethroning his father. Not by taking over the business as he had originally intended; by publicly denouncing him for his actions as CEO. The Times, then, should be able to answer its own question, as it delivers a vehicle for Murdoch the younger to reveal that his resignation from the board of News Corp this summer was more than simply “disagreements over certain editorial content […] and certain other strategic decisions” (as went the press release), but that he believes his father’s news outlets “legitimize disinformation”.
The basis for the character of Kendall couldn’t be any more clearly James, and Jesse Armstrong and the writers of Succession have done a phenomenal job across the board of taking the most fascinating elements of these characters and repackaging them into fresh narrative arcs. Watch Succession alongside the BBC’s three-part documentaryThe Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty that aired this summer, or even note the finer details of the NYTimes piece, and there both men are: an investor in VICE Media (Vaulter), who ran a small hip hop label (L to the OG, please stop), and widely noted as the more sensitive of the two sons (relying on a buttload of cocaine to cope with the reality of living under his bullying father, as opposed to the comparatively carefree, nihilistic but ever-relishing Roman).
Looking at the rest of the family, too, the writers have orchestrated relevant arcs for an already robust set of characters in all their disgusting gild, mapping them to even more elaborate, crushing, and satisfying narrative arcs (see: Prudence, who likes to stay out of the limelight but does not want to be forgotten, becomes the reclusive, then suddenly Libertarian Presidential hopeful, Connor Roy).
The NYT article goes part way to capturing in James the strange brew that Kendall represents — the apple that fell a little way from the tree yet still rotted in its shadow, and the desperation of normal people watching for him to do something good with all that power and money. By his own account, James and his wife now appear to be dedicated to changing the media industry for the better:
He is particularly excited about investing in start-ups created to combat fake news and the spread of disinformation, having found the proliferation of deep fakes “terrifying” because they “undermine our ability to discern what’s true and what’s not” and it “is only at the beginning as far as I can tell.” He’s funding a research program to study digital manipulation of societies, hoping to curtail “the use of technology to promulgate totalitarianism’’ and undermine democracies.
I mean, one assumes that there won’t be any revolutionary restructuring of power under a Murdoch, but if someone in a family worth $18bn is on board with no-no-ing how bad it’s got, I’m not going to turn my nose up all the way.
I am hesitant to suggest a third series for Succession; I’m one of those annoying die-hard fans who has been glowing endlessly this last year about its perfect two-season run to people whose job isn’t caring about TV. But if there is one, I’d love to see Kendall in a relationship that works, and a company with a different culture, saving the media industry from deep fakes and fake news.
(*As progressive as a multi-millionaire, who would like to remain that rich, can be.)