There could be a more excruciatingly embarrassing TV character than Tom Wambsgans succession? Played with understated comedy by British actor Matthew Macfadyen, Tom manages to exist at every point of the series’ power spectrum simultaneously: bullied, bullied, and helpless in between.

For the better part of three seasons, Tom remained a step and a half behind the machinations of Waystar Royco, the company run by his imperious father-in-law, LoganRoy (Brian Cox), while he was treated with casual contempt by his wife, Shiv (Sarah Snook).

AS it came as a shock when Tom rallied at the end of season 3 to orchestrate an impressive power playteaming with Logan against Shiv and two of his brothers in an epic battle for the future of Waystar.

Not that that guarantees Tom will finish at the top in the fourth and final season of successionThat starts today Sunday on HBO. (Whatever “on top” really means.)

“Tom Keeps Maneuvering and Running”

“Tom may be in Logan’s camp, but it’s not an easy camp,” Macfadyen said one February afternoon, over amaros and sodas in the Carlyle Hotel’s Bemelmans bar. “He’s not feeling particularly confident yet, and he’s still worried about his relationship with Shiv. And everyone else is still maneuvering and racing.”

If Macfadyen is operationally uncomfortable successionin fact it is quite the opposite: relaxed, carefree and affable, with a deep and confident voice, without the nervous tics of his character or the frantic efforts to read his fate in the eyes of others.

While Tom is plagued by inner demons and crippling insecurity, Macfadyen comes across as remarkably well adjusted, someone happy to do his job and not fuss too much. He uses the word “lovely” a lot.

Little known in the US

Macfadyen, long known to British viewers, it had passed almost unnoticed on this side of the Atlantic Before succession.

If Americans knew him, it was for his role as another Tom: Tom Quinn, an arrogant and vulnerable spy in the first two seasons of the British series. Ghosts (known in the US as MI-5), starting in 2002. Or you may have seen him play a brooding, tortured Mr. Darcy in pride and Prejudice (2005), by Joe Wright, or a Victorian detective in the BBC series Street of the Ripper.

It was a different role that landed Jesse Armstrong, the creator of succession: Macfadyen’s role as the drunk Sir Felix Carbury in The way we live now (2001), a British miniseries based on the novel by Anthony Trollope.

“He’s well known in the UK for his ability to play all kinds of roles, even if most people don’t necessarily know him as a comedian,” says Armstrong.

Even if Tom started succession largely on the sidelines, “I knew this role was going to be significant and important,” Armstrong said. As the series progresses, the writers took advantage of Macfadyen’s comedic skills and his ability to show Tom’s touching vulnerability in the quietest moments.

“In a series about power and its manifestations, Matthew plays very well a character who is at the center of different power relationships,” explains Armstrong. “He’s good at showing Tom’s willingness to shape and adjust his personality to fit the power structure.”

As Macfadyen recently explained in The show tonightOne way to do this is to raise and lower the pitch of Tom’s voice, depending on who else is in the scene.

A theatrical beginning

Macfadyen, 48 years old, was born in England but raised abroad. She spent several years in Jakarta, Indonesia due to her father’s work in the oil industry. He went to boarding school in his country, did not go to university and enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

After graduating, he toured internationally with the Cheek by Jowl theater group, performing in shows such as The Duchess of Amalfi AND Dream of a summer night.

The role of Hareton Earnshaw in the British television adaptation of stormy heights in 1998 was a huge success, followed by a two-part BBC film, warriors, in which he played a United Nations peacekeeper in Bosnia. He hasn’t stopped working since then.

“It’s gaining momentum,” he says.

Macfadyen has the tendency, common to English actors, to minimize his work, as if everything flows effortlessly. She also has a fondness for secondary roles.

“I think sometimes you can fall into a rut when you play as the protagonist,” he said. “It’s so much more fun being the bad guy or the clown.”

Tom Wambsgan’s character

succession is filled with big names and memorable characters, including the three Roy boys: Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Connor (Alan Ruck), each scary and damaged in their own way. But Tom Wambsgans, moody but sensitive, diabolical and almost always down on his luck, stood out from the start.

There’s the matter of her strange surname, with her awkward B bristling aggressively into a string of consonants, defying casual pronunciation. There is his punching bag status for Roy, a man whose wife announced on their wedding night that she wanted an open marriage and whose father-in-law hangs power before him but uses him as a scapegoat and trunk.

There’s also her insane relationship with Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), a sadomasochistic game that Armstrong describes as a “homoerotic power play.”

While Tom isn’t stupid, his clumsiness is so easy to mistake for stupidity that Macfadyen sometimes does as well.

“Jesse will remind me and Nick, ‘He runs a multi-million dollar wing of this company; he’s not a complete jerk,'” she said. During the four seasons of filming in New York, the cast of succession became very close and it was not uncommon to see them dining around town in various configurations at what Macfadyen called “the dinner club of succession“. He often had dinner with Snook, his fictional wife and other members of the cast.

“I don’t know how he managed to make such a fawning, overbearing character likeable, but he did,” said Snook. “He’s one of those actors who has so much love and empathy and compassion and curiosity about the world that he can make a character into whatever he wants.”

Macfadyen appears to be something of a rarity: an actor without a huge ego. (Or maybe he’s such a good actor that he can hide his ego.) Among other things, he said, he’s never felt compelled to ask for more airtime or a better story arc for Tom.

“I’ve seen actors who are very proud of their ‘journey,'” he said. “But I don’t feel like it’s my character—it’s Jesse’s, and I’m the conduit for him.”

Also, “you don’t want to latch onto a potential topic, because they might change their minds.”

The virtues of the actor

Braun said Macfadyen has real detachment, a useful quality in a show where multiple actors are often involved in a single scene. He also praised Macfadyen’s uncanny ability to stay in the moment while performing, and to do so without vanity.

“He doesn’t spend a lot of extra energy before a scene,” Braun said. “She’s not brooding or taking a lot of private time or ‘holding energy’ from Tom.”

In that sense, Macfadyen seems the opposite of his co-star Strong, whose intensity and extreme immersion in his characters have been reviewed extensively in The New Yorker and elsewhere. Macfadyen was reluctant to discuss this issue.

“I think enough has been said about it,” he said.

While succession is carefully scripted, the actors are encouraged to improvise and play with alternative dialogue. Braun and Macfadyen, who shared some of the funniest scenes on the show, are notorious throughout the studio for arguing with each other.

“The kid is offensive in a way that isn’t over the top,” Braun says of Tom.

“They obviously enjoy each other,” Armstrong said dryly.

Private life

macfadyen he is married to British actress Keeley Haweswho he met when they both played spies MI-5. They had a very public relationship — she later had a husband and a child — but they married in 2004, after her divorce, and had two children together. Macfadyen said they all became great friends and in-laws.

“It was a little bumpy at the time, but it’s okay now,” he said.

Macfadyen missed his family while filming succession, and often flew to England when taking a break from filming. But he was nostalgic for the series finale.

“It was a really lovely group of actors,” she said. “It’s strange how painful it is to finish a job. It’s horrific and heartbreaking, but at the same time there’s a slight relief, a complicated mix of feelings.”

Macfadyen worked tirelessly on other projects between seasons. in the British series stone house, released in January, played 1970s Conservative politician John Stonehouse. It was a juicy role: Stonehouse spied (badly) for Czechoslovakia, got involved in shady dealings, cheated on his wife, faked his own death and went under an assumed name in Australia.

Mrs. Stonehouse was played by Hawes, whose character quickly realizes that her husband is not what he seems.

“It was fun to get a chance to see Keeley work,” Macfadyen said, “especially his looks.”

Macfadyen’s next project, with Nicole Kidman, is Holland, Michigan., an Amazonian thriller about the secrets that lurk in a small town. He doesn’t seem worried about what comes next. Unlike Tom Wambsgans, Macfadyen is content with his place in the world.

“The whole art of being an actor is figuring out what it’s like to be someone else with sympathy and empathy, not revolving everything around yourself,” he says. “The work is amazing. I like the old fashion of wearing a costume and playing differently and doing things you never thought you’d do in real life.”