5. … and came in very useful when he wrote for The Thick of It
That insight into human behaviour fed directly into political satire The Thick of It – the show created by Armando Iannucci, which Jesse contributed to as a writer. “I’ve always found it interesting how people end up taking on the values of the organisation they’re part of.”
Jesse Armstrong in the Desert Island Discs Studio.
If you do a made-up version, you can take from all these people’s lives, it’s all there to be stolen from or inspired by, depending on how gently you want to put it.
Jesse on why Succession worked best as a fiction.
Politics is “not that different from another workplace, from working in Oddbins which I’d been doing previously. There’s the boss. The boss says what happens. You fall in with the boss. And you end up thinking what Oddbins thinks.”
6. Peep Show was partly inspired by the supermodel Caprice and a Buddhist retreat
Jesse and his longtime writing partner Sam Bain co-created the acclaimed comedy Peep Show, known for its first-person perspective cameras and the inner monologues of its characters Mark and Jeremy, played by David Mitchell and Robert Webb.
It was the product of several strange influences. “There was a weird show with supermodel Caprice, with a camera on her head just going around her flat and thinking about how much yoghurt and jam she had left in the fridge.”
Around the same time, Bain had been on a silent Buddhist retreat. “He came back very struck by listening to the quality of his own thoughts and, and how odd and repetitive and funny and weird your thoughts are.”
Out of that eclectic mix, Peep Show was born.
7. Succession had its origins in real people – but soon it became fictional
The road to getting Succession made was long and arduous. It started as a “kind of documentary” about Rupert Murdoch – “I found that hard to write” – and then Jesse attempted to write a play about the Murdoch family. “That proved very hard to get made. So, it died.”
Over the years, as his interest in powerful men such as Robert Maxwell and Sumner Redstone continued, he realised it would work best as fiction. “If you do a made-up version, you can take from all these people’s lives,” he says. “It’s all there to be stolen from or inspired by, depending on how gently you want to put it.”
8. A writers’ room can feel like walking on the moon
Succession was Jesse’s first experience as a showrunner, the person responsible for the creative direction of the show. That involved overseeing around 200 crew members as well as “an iceberg’s worth of other people”.
Which can be a terrifying thought when sitting solo with a laptop and imagining the show into being. “You can’t think about that. You’re dead if you start thinking about the person who might have to stay up an extra night to make the set for the scene which you’ve suddenly realised is crucial. You must develop a little bit of an ice chip in your heart.”
But it’s exhilarating too, especially being in a room full of writers. “When a room is working well, it’s like you’re walking on the moon,” he says. “You’re bounding around, picking up rocks, and everything’s veined with gold.”