Director and executive producer Mark Mylod shares more with his “Succession” creator/showrunner Jesse Armstrong than British roots – notably, a determination to push the bar ever higher for their critically acclaimed HBO drama.

Like the show’s first two season finales, directed by Mylod in the UK and Croatia respectively, his latest – “All the Bells Say” – is brimming with conflict in a foreign land. This time, the characters sail through Italy, as the future of the Roys’ media conglomerate, Waystar Royco, and some of its key players come loose, before a shocking ending.

“I stayed production standard-bearer for cinematic reach and scale,” observes Mylod, who directs the final episodes of each season and has lobbied for international venues to reveal “the global nature of our billionaires’ existence.”

While he probably foresaw the palpable oppression blown through hot, dusty Tuscany, he didn’t expect a windstorm to help turn an already difficult pivotal scene into one of the “most difficult that he has ever supervised on the show.

While Logan (Brian Cox) strives to determine the future of his empire and to determine which of his ruthless children – Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), novel (Kieran Culkin) and Connor (Alan Ruck) – remain involved, the three youngest Scions meet to plot a strategy, but instead stumble over their best approximation of sibling intimacy. Still struggling after her own failed takeover bid for the family business, Kendall sparks the breakthrough by finally confessing her grotesque role in the death of a waiter at Shiv’s English wedding that concluded Season 1. .

“At the end of the scene, with the dust blowing away, we would literally be washing [Snook’s eyes] between takes so she can just open them,” says Mylod, clearly impressed with the professionalism of his casting. It also highlights the more deft touches they bring, which take scenes like the trio’s heart-to-heart to the next level — the moment Culkin spontaneously placed a hand on Strong’s back, for example.

“Jeremy snapped when Kieran touched him,” Mylod recalled. “At that point you think, ‘This scene is okay. We have it.’ Because the first takes, we just couldn’t land it. This moment felt like lightning. The Directors Guild of America agreed, bestowing it with its 2022 Outstanding Directing Achievement Award in a Drama Series for the finale.

Snook sparked another electric charge elsewhere in the episode when Shiv punched Roman realizing he hadn’t been aware of Logan’s interactions with a tech mogul (Alexander Skarsgärd’s Matsson) looking to invest or buy Waystar Royco. Yet he never instructs his actors on their physical movements, instead focusing on the “emotional arc of a scene” and helping them achieve their “peak intensity”.

This assistance is sometimes generated by the location of a scene. “The last confrontation with Logan in this episode was an 11 or 12 page scene, and it had to be the perfect space,” he says. “We had referred to it as Gothic and looked at old Renaissance palaces and villas, but then I walked in and this place was the opposite of that.”

The more austere look excited the series’ production designer, Stephen H. Carter. “One of the things I’ve tried to do for the Roy family over the seasons is to take the personality out of the places they own a bit,” Carter says. “I want people to feel like they have a team hired to choose the artwork. I do not think that The Roys themselves have the patience or perhaps the aesthetic sensibility to personally choose what goes on their wall.

The building in question is the lair Logan has stationed himself in while the family attends the wedding of the English mother of his three young children, Lady Caroline (Harriet Walter). Mylod notes that Cox’s physical position was also essential when he devastates his children with a deadly blow: “Wherever Logan is, the rest of the play would unconsciously fall into this orbit. Logan is a master at manipulating and owning space. Carter agrees, “We really wanted to set it up subtly to make it look like the kids were walking into a trap, and Logan was there and ready to set it off.”

“Succession” costume designer Michelle Matland is, in Carter’s book, perpetually “cool as a cucumber,” no matter how challenging the outfit. Indeed, Matland notes that she couldn’t wait for the change of scenery “after a full season of COVID touring New York – offices, interior apartments and corporate environments. The idea of ​​a nuptials planned outside under the Tuscan sun was a relief for the entire cast and crew.

The ties may have been loosened, and for the most part completely thrown away, but the tension remained high – scripted anyway. Matland, meanwhile, adds that she has taken advantage of the British tradition of marrying “large ornate hats for men and women” as protection from the sun’s harmful rays.

Carter jokes that the couple must share some form of ESP. “It’s rare that we have a lot of time to sit down and discuss color swatches, but we really manage to synchronize our palettes. Maybe it’s just that after so much time together, we find out about each other’s clues very quickly.

Two top local recruits also made his job much easier. “We were very lucky to have landed with a fantastic art director and set designer – these wonderful ladies [Cristina Onori and Letizia Santucci] which came to us directly after finishing “House of Gucci”. They were able to ride straight which made for an incredibly smooth transition for me.

Indeed, Mylod suggests that “Succession” owes everyone on the call sheet thanks. “We all understand exactly the point we are trying to arrive, but we must all come to the same place in our own way,” he explains, perhaps the most proud of the “most perfect connection” never established between Kendall, Shiv and Romain.

“It’s as tender a moment as it gets, I think,” he continued. “There’s no way in any incarnation of these siblings’ entire history that they could be any closer than this.”