It’s a generous decision on their behalf. It means the artful mechanics of how the show came to be are laid bare.

I wonder if the sad I’d be from being without you might be less than the sad I get from being with you? Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Succession: Season Three feature unseen extra material, including deleted scenes, alternative dialogue and character directions. They reveal a unique insight into the writing, creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen-writing masterpiece. Screenplays continually shift over a film or TV show’s development. Countless drafts are authored during pre-production. New ideas get dropped in by writers, actors and directors while on set. Even once the shooting stops, it isn’t over. Not only are cuts made in the edit, but new lines of dialogue are craftily dropped in. Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Succession: SeasonOne feature unseen extra material, including deleted scenes, alternativedialogue and character directions, and an exclusive introduction from creatorand showrunner, Jesse Armstrong. They reveal a unique insight into the writing,creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen-writing masterpiece. With an exclusive introduction from creator Jesse Armstrong.Given there is no single moment when the text is stable, which version do you publish? What do you do? Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Succession: SeasonTwo feature unseen extra material, including deleted scenes, alternative dialogue and character directions. They reveal a unique insight into the writing, creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen-writing masterpiece. I wonder if the sad I'd be from being without you might be less than the sad I get from being with you? Kendall Roy is dealing with fallout from his hostile takeover attempt of Waystar Royco and the heavy guilt from a fatal accident. Shiv stands poised to make her way into the upper-echelons of the company, which is causing complications for Tom, which is causing complications for Greg. Meanwhile,Roman is reacquainting himself with the business by starting at the bottom, asConnor prepares to launch an unlikely bid for president.

The complete, authorised scripts, including deleted scenes, of the multiple award-winning Succession .

Whether due to all this grist, or the aligning of the political planets (in)auspiciously, the pilot came unnervingly easily. Getting names in a script to feel real can be hard for me – they’re a tell-tale sign of whether I’m living inside it. Kendall, Shiv, Roman, Connor. They all felt right straight off the bat. Their inspirations, I suppose, were the children of these magnates: three of the Maxwell kids, the ones closest to the business (the boys, Ian and Kevin) and to their father (Ghislaine). Brent and Shari Redstone, with whom Sumner played a tough and complicated game of bait-and-switch over CBS-Paramount succession. And the Murdoch children, Prudence, Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, Chloe and Grace. The editing process on the books since that decision has been unique. Alongside the usual duties of ensuring sense and structure, I’ve found myself becoming a kind of multimedia archivist of the show. Headily toggling between screened episodes, shooting drafts, and discussions with the creators to ensure we release the most lucid version of these scripts. Identifying little ret-cons and subtle variations in the dialogue. Noting points where plot turns had been introduced early, then redacted, as the writers bided their time before they pounced. My US agent was the first person I recall suggesting a totally different approach. A fictional family, a multi-series US show. For five years or so, I dismissed the idea, certain that a portrayal of a fictional family would never have the power of a real one. Four works changed my mind: HBO’s excellent Robert Durst documentary, The Jinx; Sumner Redstone’s grimly business-focused autobiography, A Passion to Win; James B Stewart’s propulsive DisneyWar; and Tom Bower’s fascinating Robert Maxwell biography Maxwell: The Final Verdict. These turned the idea of doing a media-family drama without a singular real-life model from a terrible betrayal of reality into a tantalising chance to harvest all the best stories. Here was an opportunity to explore all the most fascinating family dynamics within a propitiously balanced fictional hybrid media conglomerate. I took a long, deep dive into rich-family and media-business research. I talked about this, as-yet-unwritten, idea in half-ironised terms as ‘Festen-meets-Dallas’

In the same way, one of my favourite moments in the episode just happened, too,” Myold told GQ “Right at the end of the episode when Sarah’s character has just done the press briefing, and the three of them fall into this three-way hug before going their separate ways. That wasn’t in the script.” Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Succession: Season One feature unseen extra material, including deleted scenes, alternative dialogue and character directions. They reveal a unique insight into the writing, creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen-writing masterpiece.

The first thing you have to ask when you are publishing a screenplay is: what is the essential version of the script?

I think a lot of the better films and TV shows I’ve been involved with have at their heart a quite simple impulse around which the more subtle layers are spun. In the Loop’s spark was anger at the Iraq war. Chris Morris’s Four Lions I think was driven by his gut feeling that something was very wrong with the way we understood jihadi terrorism in the UK. Peep Show was about oddball male friendship, perhaps even “masculinity”. Seasons One, Two and Three will be out on 18 May with Season Four shortly following the end of that series. Greg, I guess, was a distant relative of the sort of political adviser I had myself briefly been. Gormless, clueless, out of place and gauche. But not without an eye for a deal. And, I hope, a little more wheedling and insinuating than I ever was. The scenes flowed. I put all research aside and followed my nose and wrote pretty much exactly what I wantedI guess the simple things at the heart of Succession ended up being Brexit and Trump. The way the UK press had primed the EU debate for decades. The way the US media’s conservative outriders prepared the way for Trump, hovered at the brink of support and then dived in. The British press of Rothermere, Maxwell, Murdoch and the Barclay brothers, and the US news environment of Fox and Breitbart. Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Succession: Season One, Season Two, and Season Three feature unseen extra material. Including deleted scenes, alternative dialogue, and character directions. They reveal a unique insight into the writing, creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen- writing masterpiece. Season One will include an exclusive introduction from creator and showrunner, Jesse Armstrong. Seasons Two, Three and Four will also include exclusive introductions by other screen writers on the show including ‘Executive Producer Frank Rich’ and ‘Executive Producer and writer Lucy Prebble’.