Was ‘Succession’ Really Based on the Murdoch Family? The Biggest Similarities & Differences

If you have the theme song for HBO’s Succession running through your head while watching the new Netflix docuseries Dynasty: The Murdochs (premiering on Friday, March 13), you’re not making too far of a logical leap. In an earlier form, the project that became Succession was actually based on the Murdoch family.

In a 2023 essay for The Guardian, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong said he originally wanted to write a “faux-documentary laying out Rupert Murdoch’s business secrets, with them delivered straight to camera.” That idea morphed into a “sort of TV play, set at the media owner’s 80th birthday party.” And then, at the urging of his U.S. agent, Armstrong developed the idea into a TV series about a fictional family.

Armstrong did say Rupert was one inspiration for Succession CEO Logan Roy, but Sumner Redstone and Robert Maxwell were the other two figures in the “holy trinity of models” for the Brian Cox character.

Even the Murdoch family has picked up on the similarities. Citing a source, Vanity Fair reported in 2023 that Lachlan Murdoch told dad Rupert that brother James was leaking stories to Succession’s writers. (That said, a source close to Lachlan told the magazine Lachlan never told Rupert such a thing.)

Vanity Fair also reported that when Rupert and his fourth wife Jerry Hall split in 2022, their divorce settlement forbade her from giving story ideas to the Succession scribes. (Hall was an avid Succession fan, according to The New York Times.)

So, in its final form, is Succession really just a Murdoch family biopic? Well, yes and no. Allow us to explain.

Both the Roys and the Murdochs have a powerful patriarch, an heir apparent, and a black sheep.

As Armstrong detailed in the Succession origin story quoted above, Logan Roy is an approximation of Rupert Murdoch, with other media magnates mixed in for added flavor. Logan’s son Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) is initially positioned as his next-in-line, as Lachlan Murdoch is now. (“You’re my number one boy,” Logan tells Kendall in Season 1.) And Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin), a rogue child in Succession, is similar to James Murdoch, who has spoken critically of his father and his siblings and distanced himself from the family’s conservative media empire.

Both families have a right-wing-friendly media empire.

As The Week points out, the Roy family’s company Waystar Royco bears a striking resemblance to the Murdochs’ mass-media company News Corp. Waystar Royco’s news operation ATN is a conservative-leaning cable channel like Fox News, which was once a subsidiary of the first News Corporation iteration and is now part of the Murdochs’ Fox Corporation. And Waystar Royco also runs a tabloid called The NY Globe, an analog of News Corp’s New York Post, and a film studio called Waystar Studios, an analog of the first News Corporation’s subsidiary 20th Century Fox.

Both families had a bitter succession drama.

True to the TV show’s title, much of the drama of Succession hinges on which of Logan Roy’s adult children will inherit his CEO position upon his death, and the younger Roys make power plays as they vie for the position. The question of the Murdochs’ line of succession, meanwhile, might even be more dramatic. Until recently, Rupert was set to bequeath control of the family business equally to his four oldest children, Prue, Liz, Lachlan, and James. But then, Rupert tried to change the family’s irrevocable trust so that only Lachlan, who’s more conservative than the other three siblings, would have control, according to The New York Times. Finally, a deal was struck in which Lachlan would have control until 2050, while Prue, Liz, and James would each get $1.1 billion for their shares, the Times reported.

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Tom and Greg don’t have apparent counterparts in the Murdoch family, though.

Two major Succession characters with no clear Murdoch family parallels are Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) and Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun). Armstrong wrote in his Guardian essay that he based Tom partly on “the sort of lunks I’ve occasionally seen powerful women choose as partners … plausible, manly men with big watches and a soothing, affable manner.” And he based Greg partly on his own days as a political adviser: “Gormless, clueless, out of place and gauche,” he wrote. “But not without an eye for a deal. And, I hope, a little more wheedling and insinuating than I ever was.”

HBO

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The Succession saga ended in a way the Murdoch story isn’t.

Succession Season 4 spoiler alert. In the HBO drama’s final season, Logan dies, Waystar gets bought out by Swedish tech company GoJo, and it’s not any of the Roy siblings but instead Logan’s son-in-law Tom who becomes the company’s new U.S. CEO. In the case of the Murdochs, Rupert is still kicking — he just celebrated his 95th birthday with a star-studded New York City party headlined by a Hugh Jackman performance — and, as detailed above, Lachlan will have control over the Murdoch family’s News Corp and Fox Corporation following Rupert’s death.

Dynasty: The Murdochs, Series Premiere, Friday, March 13, Netflix