J Smith-Cameron Says “Older Women Are Enjoying Surge Of Breakout Parts” & Recalls Genesis Of Gerri-Roman Relationship In ‘Succession’
J Smith-Cameron played one of the great modern roles for a woman in her 60s in Succession, and she’s backing more breakout parts to emerge in the entertainment industry.
Quizzed on whether there are more roles for older women in theater than on screen during an interview with the Guardian, she replied: “Well, I think older women are enjoying a surge of breakout older parts. It used just to be matriarchs, these ball-busting boss characters. But there’s a sort of bewildered vulnerability to middle and older age that is very rich and ripe to be explored, and people are beginning to do that.”
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The Kentucky-born Tony Award winner, who is making her London stage debut in Seán O-Casey’s play Juno and the Paycock opposite Mark Rylance in the UK, was 60 when the first season of HBO drama Succession began. She played the smart corporate exec Gerri Kellman, who at times appeared to be the only person within the Waystar RoyCo company with any common sense. Smith-Cameron was twice nominated for Primetime Emmys for the role.
Smith-Cameron’s part was initially written for a man, she recalled, and only supposed to be in four episodes, but Smith-Cameron recalled how she “willed” herself “into every episode of the season after that,” and noted how creator Jesse Armstrong and his team had allowed her creative freedom with the character.
“We all created our parts, in a way,” she said. “I thought Gerri should have glasses, that she should wear her hair up. And then there was the camera, moving round as if it was one of us. We would throw in improvisations. If you said something funny, it would just swing back to get the reaction. You had to assume you were always on camera.”
On a similar note, Smith-Cameron recalled how the weird, psychosexual relationship Gerri forms with Kieran Culkin’s man-child heir Roman was also partly an accident — something she previously talked about in 2023.
“We were in a bar, and we had this little exchange, and then I left – and apparently Kieran kind of looked back at me, and then just as he turned around, I looked back at him,” she said. “The writers were giggling, and when we came back for the next season Alan Ruck [who played Roman’s brother Connor] said, ‘So, I hear you’re Roman’s love interest for season two.’ I was, like, ‘What?’ I didn’t believe him at all.”
Smith-Cameron revealed that once Succession had ended in 2023, she started receiving acting role offers of characters that were “Gerri, and they felt like weak tea, because there is only one Gerri, and I was an unlikely person to play her in the first place.”
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