Macall Polay/HBO.
- "Succession" patriarch Logan Roy rallied his fictional newsroom with a speech atop printer-paper boxes.
- It seemed to reference real-life media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who once used a similar makeshift pedestal.
- The scene appeared in the second episode of the current season of the HBO show that aired Sunday night.
Logan Roy, the imposing media mogul on "Succession," stood on printer-paper boxes to deliver one of his more fiery speeches on the HBO hit show.
The scene seemed to reference a real-life moment back in 2007, in which News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch reportedly addressed journalists from the same makeshift pedestal.
—Sarah Ellison (@sarahellison) April 3, 2023
In the episode that aired on Sunday night, Roy stepped up on boxes gathered together on the fictional ATN newsroom floor to deliver a rousing call for staff at the network to step up and meet the demands of a shifting industry.
"I want to know that we're killing the opposition!" Roy bellowed in the episode that aired on Sunday night, the second in the current and final season of the hit HBO show chronicling the power struggles of a fictional media billionaire family.
"You're fucking pirates!" he roared.
Roy made the speech as he geared up for a landscape-altering deal that would see him cede power at his media conglomerate Waystar Royco to the mercurial tech mogul Lukas Mattson.
Back in the real world, Murdoch gave a rather more tempered address to journalists at the Wall Street Journal after News Corp. acquired the Journal's publisher Dow Jones in December 2007.
But Murdoch had also opted for the same unassuming pedestal, standing on boxes of printer paper that Dow Jones VP of communications, Robert Christie, had assembled on the floor, according to Washington Post journalist Sarah Ellison's 2010 book "War at the Wall Street Journal."
A representative for Murdoch and News Corp. declined to comment.
In his speech, Murdoch told the reporters present that "We have to entertain, inform, enrich all our readers in their lives and in their businesses," according to Ellison's book.
"We must be the preeminent sources of financial information and comment in the world," he said, according to Ellison's book. "And we must put ourselves beyond there being any doubt in that regard."
Ellison told Insider that Roy's speech captured some aspects of Murdoch's real-life moment.
"Brian Cox's depiction of Logan Roy is feistier and louder than Rupert was the day he arrived in the WSJ newsroom," Ellison said.
"The scene in 'Succession' is something of a mashup of Rupert's first in-person address to the Wall Street Journal newsroom (where he stood on printer paper boxes) and the moment when he returned to run Fox News after he ousted Ailes," she said, referring to the late former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.
"I remember the scramble to make him some kind of stage, and all that was available were printer paper boxes," Ellison said, referring to Murdoch. "So that part of the scene is very loyal to reality."
Representatives for Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Heidi Moore, a digital media consultant who was New York bureau chief at Financial News at the time when she was present at Murdoch's 2007 speech, told Insider that his speech felt "hurriedly pulled together," just as Roy's was on the show.
"Then we all kind of stood around as people were literally dispatched to drag the printer boxes over to where Rupert planned to stand," she added.
—Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) April 3, 2023
Like Ellison, Moore also noted the somewhat more subdued vibe of Murdoch's address, saying he cut a more "avuncular" figure than the thundering Roy.
"The whole thing was very unsettling and frankly, it was an unhappy day for a lot of people," Moore told Insider. "The printer boxes, especially since we literally saw them dragged to their place, were key to the mood of menace and worry that day."
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/8WVeGmk
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