Nicholas Braun bids farewell to HBO’s Succession

The last time that Nicholas Braun was in Toronto, the actor’s world felt smaller, stranger. It was December, 2019, and Braun was coming off his second season co-starring in Succession, the dark HBO comedy about one Murdochesque family’s corporate malfeasance that, while a critical darling at the time, was just then starting to take control of the zeitgeist. Similarly, Braun was only just beginning to realize what his career – what his entire life – might look like for the foreseeable future.

His nervous, bumbling, ne’er-do-well character Greg (aka Cousin Greg, aka Greg the Egg, aka a number of vulgar nicknames that cannot be repeated here) had struck a sympathetic chord with audiences watching the antics of the show’s central Roy clan, a venomous group of industry snakes that are as greedy as they are perversely lovable.

“It’s cool because Greg is the audience’s perspective – this naive kid going into this dark world. But it does feel exciting to promote something that I love, too, because this show has changed my life. I was watching Oz and The Wire when I was like 10 years old, and now I’m on HBO doing a show that’s well-received?” Braun said at the time. “I would love to play Greg for as long as they’ll have me.”

Unfortunately – partly for Braun, mostly for his now massive, devoted fanbase – that time has now come, three years, two seasons, one pandemic and many Greg memes later.

Today, the actor is back in Toronto, making the media rounds to promote the fourth and final season of Succession, perhaps the most feverishly anticipated television swan song since Game of Thrones wandered off into the Westeros sunset. And just as Cousin Greg is no longer the Roy family’s awkward outcast – okay, he’s still magnificently awkward, but more an insider this time around, and one who is not above getting his hands dirty, or paying someone else to do so – Braun is no longer a star on the rise but the genuine article. The 34-year-old even has the magazine covers (GQ), movies (the indie hit Zola, the forthcoming destined-to-be-viral romance-from-hell comedy Cat Person), and social media bait (“Greg sprinkles?”) to prove it.

So yes, while Braun is sad to see Succession go, he is satisfied with how his journey – rather, how Cousin Greg’s journey – has turned out. Thanks, naturally, to creator and show-runner Jesse Armstrong, who made the rather unusual peak-TV decision to quit while he was ahead. Before, say, HBO floated paying him a dumptruck full of money to make a spinoff focusing on Greg and his bromantic partner in corporate crime Tom Wambsgans, played by Matthew Macfadyen.

“It’s always been the goal of mine and Jesse’s to slowly grow Greg’s maturity, almost unnoticeably, with little things here and there. You get sharper suits, more expensive shoes, the posture changes a little bit. I think we’ve done it well,” Braun says today, as affable, polite and towering (6 foot 7) as he was a few years ago, if, perhaps wearing a nicer looking sweater and sporting a slicker haircut.

“The conversation with Jesse has always been on making sure that we’re not moving too fast through any character development. I’ve always been, let’s give Greg some confidence! And Jesse’s been, ‘Not quite yet.’ That’s the fun of it, these micromaturations.”

Still, it was a slight surprise for Braun to learn that those micro-maturations would only end up going so far. A year ago, the actor and his fellow cast members – including once-relative unknowns such as Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook, all of whom have become hot properties like Braun as the show gained cultural momentum – joined a Zoom call with Armstrong between the production of the third and fourth seasons.

“It felt ... it felt I guess like a bit of a bummer?” Braun says, his voice levelling up an inch or two in true Cousin Greg fashion. “When you’re making a show – and we’re all signed for seven seasons in our contract – you’re at the whims of the writing and HBO and anybody else who can make a decision. It’s cool, it’s not up to us, and there was something kind of nice about that there’s an end point. We now had to make the most of this season and know that this was going to be the last time that I worked with a lot of these people. It’s not going to be an ongoing thing for 10 years in my life.”

Does this mean that there is a happy ending in store for Cousin Greg? Or as happy as there can be in the cut-throat world of Succession?

“I like to know the rough shape of the season for Greg, because I know that Jesse could change it whenever he wants, and things always change as we’re making the show, but I did want to know how things finish up,” Braun says. “Where do we want the character to land? I can say that Season 4 is a very fun journey for Greg. I feel very proud.”

Whether Greg ends up learning any lessons from his time spent with the Roys is an open question. But Braun himself knows that he will walk away from Succession a far stronger performer, and all-round artist.

“Jesse and the writers taught me so much about what I can do and what I want to do – what I want to make on my own,” says Braun, who has several projects in development, including a halfhour pilot for HBO called One for the Road, about indie musicians. “The acting stuff is great, but I don’t like having days off. I don’t like leaving set early. When I have 10 days off in a row, I don’t know what to do with myself.”

After a bite of a breakfast sandwich – an omelette-looking concoction that we’ll dub a Tomlette made with broken Gregs – Braun contemplates the possibility of a Succession sequel, prequel, reboot, or any other one of the many ways prestige television creators have managed to keep their intellectual property alive. While aware of the dangers of such a proposition – for every Better Call Saul there is a Many Saints of Newark – Braun isn’t completely ruling out a return to Cousin Greg’s endearing stammers and sputters.

“The indulgence in doing something like a Tom and Greg spinoff would, I think, take a little bit of the shine off of Succession,” he says. “I don’t know if there’s a world in which you want to watch a one-hour drama about them. A 30-minute sitcom? That would take away from the greatness, too. That’s the risk, and I don’t think Jesse is interested, and if he’s not, I’m not.”

“But,” Braun adds, “I love playing Greg. If Jesse figures out a way for a fifth season, I’m in.”

The new season of Succession premieres March 26 at 9 p.m. EST on HBO/Crave, with new episodes weekly.