![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/p0mswph0.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Jesse Armstrong in the Desert Island Discs Studio.\n <\/p>\n
If you do a made-up version, you can take from all these people\u2019s lives, it’s all there to be stolen from or inspired by, depending on how gently you want to put it.<\/p>\n
Jesse on why Succession worked best as a fiction.<\/p>\n
Politics is \u201cnot that different from another workplace, from working in Oddbins which I\u2019d been doing previously. There\u2019s the boss. The boss says what happens. You fall in with the boss. And you end up thinking what Oddbins thinks.\u201d<\/p>\n
6. Peep Show was partly inspired by the supermodel Caprice and a Buddhist retreat<\/p>\n
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<\/a> and Robert Webb<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was the product of several strange influences. \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Around the same time, Bain had been on a silent Buddhist retreat. \u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Out of that eclectic mix, Peep Show was born.<\/p>\n 7. Succession had its origins in real people \u2013 but soon it became fictional<\/p>\n The road to getting Succession made was long and arduous. It started as a \u201ckind of documentary\u201d about Rupert Murdoch \u2013 \u201cI found that hard to write\u201d \u2013 and then Jesse attempted to write a play about the Murdoch family. \u201cThat proved very hard to get made. So, it died.\u201d<\/p>\n 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. \u201cIf you do a made-up version, you can take from all these people\u2019s lives,\u201d he says. \u201cIt’s all there to be stolen from or inspired by, depending on how gently you want to put it.\u201d<\/p>\n 8. A writers\u2019 room can feel like walking on the moon<\/p>\n Succession was Jesse\u2019s 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 \u201can iceberg\u2019s worth of other people\u201d.<\/p>\n Which can be a terrifying thought when sitting solo with a laptop and imagining the show into being. \u201cYou can’t think about that. You\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s exhilarating too, especially being in a room full of writers. \u201cWhen a room is working well, it\u2019s like you\u2019re walking on the moon,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019re bounding around, picking up rocks, and everything\u2019s veined with gold.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5. \u2026 and came in very useful when he wrote for The Thick of It That insight into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-367058","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}