Roman Roy and Gerri Kellman’s romance dynamic in Succession – one of the show’s most talked-about plotlines – was apparently developed after the two actors “joke flirted” on set.
J. Smith-Cameron, who plays Gerri in the hit HBO series, said the ‘will they won’t they’ dynamic came about following some on-set improvisation from her and Roman actor Kieran Culkin.
Speaking to NME about the origins of Gerri and Roman’s romance, Smith-Cameron said: “We had this one time where we finished the dialogue and they didn’t say cut. So when that happens you just have to go on, carry on in character, and it kind of just rolled into this sort of flirtatious repartee.
“As I left the scene I checked him out and he kind of checked me out, and I think they [the producers] were laughing.
“But Kieran [Culkin] tells it that… and it’s true we were kind of joke flirting all the time on the set, and he would call me ‘mummy girlfriend’ and I would call him ‘baby man’. So I think they [the writers] do pick up on everyone’s chemistry and try to lean into that and take advantage of it.”
Teasing what to expect from their dynamic in season three, she added: “Gerri is a very disciplined character, and I didn’t start this, he [Roman] did. I think because there’s a business plan at stake too, that I think Gerri is always trying to train that attention he’s giving her towards an end that’s not destructive. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose at that.”
Succession’s season three premiere drew the highest viewing figures for the series yet, with over 1.4million viewers tuning into the first episode on Sunday (October 17).
In NME’s four-star review, Succession season three is described as making “no changes to its core lineup or modus operandi. It continues, in dense, hour-long episodes, to be exactly as it was before: funny, awful, irritating, cold, brilliant.”
Succession season three is available to watch in the UK via Sky Atlantic and streaming service NOW.
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