The creator and showrunner of the HBO megahit and British comedy ‘Peep Show’ will receive the 2023 Founders Award at the International Emmys on Monday in New York.
It’s been almost six months since the finale of Succession.
“There was some sadness about the show ending,” says Jesse Armstrong, the British creator and showrunner of HBO multiple Emmy-winning drama (13 wins).
The show followed the misadventures of the deliriously dysfunctional Roy family, owners of media and entertainment conglomerate Waystar Royco. “Doing the show was such a rush of pleasure and anxieties and hard work, of pondering the next season and worrying that you’re going to screw it up [that] is is very, very nice to have time to read again. And to travel.”
He’s had an incredible run so far.
Even before Succession, Armstrong was comedy royalty back home, as co-creator, with writing partner Sam Bain, on the hit Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, and co-writer, with Bain and Brit TV icon Christopher Morris, on the political satire Four Lions (2010), about a quartet of phenomenally incompetent British terrorists.
He also penned “The Entire History of You,” one of the best episodes of Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror (at the time the episode was optioned by Robert Downey Jr.’s production company, but nothing came of it).
Armstrong will receive the 2023 Founders Award from the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at the International Emmy in New York on Monday.
Ahead of the event, he spoke about missing the Roys, watching the real-life drama of the Murdoch family succession and the impact of his words (including Peep Show’s Project Zeus) in the wild.
Do you miss writing for these characters?
It’s a good question. On the whole, honestly, no. I feel like we did a good job in the way we ended the story. I’m in touch with the cast and meet up with Brian [Cox] or Matthew [Macfadyen], and I text a bit with Sarah [Snook] or Kieran [Culkin] and Jeremy [Strong], so I do have pangs of regret with having had such an extraordinarily brilliant cast. I can’t quite bear to think that I’m not going to write for that group again. I’m a little bit in denial about that. But on a day-to-day level, I don’t miss it. I’m enjoying not having the tremendous pressure of making the show as good as we all wanted it to be.
It was challenging. It was a big decision. I didn’t take it lightly. I’d been thinking about it when we were doing season three. And then it was absolutely a big preoccupation, all the time between season three and season four. I was chewing on it and I’d meet up with some other of my writer friends just to think it through. It was a very slow gestation, by no means made on the hoof. It took a lot of the time before I got to the view of thinking this is what we should do. I told everyone: “This was how the story should go, I feel this in my bones, but please try to argue me out of it.” There were all sorts of reasons we’d have liked to carry on. But once you’ve felt that this is the natural end, it’s a very hard gut feeling to roll back on.
The Murdochs, who were a partial inspiration for the show, carried out their succession after the season finale
Well, life didn’t really imitate as Murdock left while he’s still very much alive. And he has apparently chosen his successor from amongst his children. So it’s rather different from our situation. But yeah, I mean, everyone knows there are parallels between the two [the show and the Murdochs]. I’ve always been keen to both admit that and also point out how many different family structures are out there, not least the [Viacom family dynasty] the Redstones and [British media moguls] the Maxwells of this world. So yes, I did follow the Murdoch succession with interest. He’s a titanic figure in modern news and culture. But it doesn’t seem to have that many parallels with what happened in our fictional world.
No, I’m not. I’m taking a break. I have three or four projects I like the shape of and I like looking at them on my whiteboard, but I’ve not quite embarked in earnest on any writing yet. I’m enjoying reading books. I’ve written a couple of reviews for places and quite enjoyed that, doing a slightly different version of writing and thinking. I’m sure it’ll be a tremendous pressure when I do start whatever I write next, whether it’s for film, TV or a book. But at the moment, it’s not pressing down on me too hard. I’m sure it will when it comes around.
Desire to go back to old ideas?
There are no Peep Show revivals on the cards. I like working with [Peep Show co-creator Sam Bain]. We never stopped writing together because of any lack of enjoyment. We didn’t fall out. We just ended up doing different things. So I’d always write with Sam again if we had the right thing cooking. But I don’t think there’s anything I’ve got that I’d like to come back to. I guess I’ve got projects that have never seen the light of day that I could return to, but the ideas I get excited about are the new ones. So I think what I’ll do next will be something new.
Will you be staying with HBO?
Connection between Peep Show and Succession?
Obviously, Succession was a collaboration with a writers room and Peep Show was very much just a duo. Me and Sam wrote the majority of it. We did nine series, so it’s very much in my bones, the feeling of it, how the show worked. There are probably all sorts of links between them, but you might be better at seeing them than me. When you’re so close to something, it can be hard. It occurred to me that Succession has a number of different tones to it, both comic and dramatic, and I think anyone watching it can feel this mixture of tonal places it can go, but I think the shapes are still self-contained. Although it’s a serialized TV show, where the story carries on across the seasons, there is something in my writing DNA that comes from doing sitcoms like Peep Show, which just likes the completeness of the single episode. I still think of myself as a comedy writer. The elements of Succession that are comic seem much clearer and more continuous in my writing to me.
How completely unsexy and unglamorous you make the super-rich seem
Showing this kind of truth can lead to change in the real world?
You don’t know what effect your words are going to have in the world. They may have the opposite effect from what you intend. Your ideas can get taken up and used against you. You lose control as soon as you put them into the world. If you try and keep a tighter control on them, you’d have to make a propaganda poster, which can only be understood in one way. I’m not interested in that whatsoever. I’m interested in things that are multiple, human and complicated, where you therefore run the risk of being misunderstood or having your ideas used against your will. But that’s OK. I don’t judge our work on the show by its affecting the world. For me, it’s like the difference between medical drugs and psychoactive recreational drugs. We are not producing a medical drug, which is, “If you take this thing it will cure your democracy.” Absolutely not. That’s not my business. But it may be a positive form of psychoactive or recreational drugs, something you might enjoy or might make you see the world a little differently. But there are dangers with those drugs, too. I think that’s that’s the business I’m in: Recreational drugs, not pharmaceuticals.
Everyone likes it when their work goes out and does great good in the world. It sounds like it’s had a tremendously positive effect. I’m very happy for them.
what shows they would have loved to make, and your shows come up all the time
