It’s a mystery that’s been baffling the Succession hive for a while now: where the hell are Roman’s wife and kid? You know, the ones that appeared alongside him in the very first episode?
Cast your minds back to June, 2018 and in the pilot episode – Logan’s birthday party – Roman is joined by his wife, Grace (actor Molly Griggs, credited as ‘Grace Roy’ on IMDB), both wearing wedding rings, and what appears to be his daughter, Isla. However, in the scene, Kendall refers to Isla as a friend of his kids, rather than their “cousin”.
So what happened to Roman’s vanishing family? A super-injunction quickie divorce? Was his wife shipped off to the “funny farm” like Connor’s mum? In an interview with Variety, the actor has finally cleared up the mystery.
When asked by the publication what had happened to Roman’s errant family, he said: “Not his kid. Not his wife, either. It was in the pilot, and after it was picked up, it was his girlfriend, and she had a child. I’m wearing my real wedding band in the episode. I was excited about the idea of having a kid, and the kid was like 7 or 8. It was a little disappointing, but I think the idea was that it would just give them more freedom to play with the character.”
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He then suggested that at the very beginning of filming the hit HBO show, he had spoken with showrunner Jesse Armstrong about the idea of Roman being sexually “fluid”, and that it was better for the character to be more ambiguous.
“They had mentioned to me, even before we shot the pilot, about questioning what Roman’s sexuality is,” he said, “and we don’t know what it is. But it put something in my brain, and I was like, ‘OK, but I’m married and have kids?’
“They were toying with the idea that she’s aware that you have sort of hangups sexually when it comes to monogamy, and might be more fluid, but we don’t know what that is yet.” Think we all know by now that Roman’s sexuality is best defined as: ‘Gerri’.
Succession continues weekly on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV.
Laura Martin is a freelance journalist specializing in pop culture.
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