The real-life billionaire families that inspired the hit series ‘Succession’

“Succession”, one of the most acclaimed television series in recent years, has finally come to an end.

Over the course of four seasons, viewers watched Logan Roy’s three sons fight to inherit control of the empire their father built over decades.

The web of alliances, betrayals, runaway money and black humor that the show’s creators managed to come up with brought “Succession” 13 Emmys during its first three seasons, and is expected to win Emmys again in 2023.

Part of the success of “Succession” has to do with the credibility given to it by the fact that some of its plots are based on real life stories.

The show’s creator, Jessee Armstrong, has never hidden that he got ideas from families like the Roys: “We did a lot of research for ‘Succession,'” Armstrong said in a promotional interview for the show. “We think of many famous media families.”

“And then, as with all creative people, you draw on various relationships that you’ve had in your own life” to create a television hit, Armstrong said.

On BBC Mundo, we take a look at some of the billionaire families that inspired “Succession”.

The Murdochs

Since the first chapter was published, many have seen parallels between the Roy family and the family of billionaire Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch.

At 92, Murdoch has spent years trying to define which of his two sons, James or Lachlan, will be his successor at the helm of the Newscorp newspaper empire, a huge company with presence in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, owner of brands as diverse as prestigious economic novelty The Wall Street Journal, English tabloid Sun and the publishing company Harper Collins.

And the battle was so public that influential media like The New York Timesthat is, a magazine The New Yorkerpublished extensive reports detailing the chaotic relationship between both brothers and their father.

Specialized business media reports that Fox’s multi-million dollar sale of its film studios to Disney in 2016 was promoted by James Murdoch, against the will of his brother Lachlan, who did not want to get rid of that part of the business.

On the other hand, James openly criticized the editorial positions taken during the administration of Donald Trump at Fox News.

His disagreement was so great that he resigned from Newscorp’s board in 2020, asserting: “My resignation is due to disagreement with certain editorial content published by the company’s media, as well as some strategic decisions.”

The Hearsts

Another clear inspiration for the creators of the series was the Hearst family, which according to Forbes magazine had a fortune of 21,000 million dollars in 2021.

Within their current catalog they own media such as newspapers San Francisco ChronicleMagazine squire and television networks ESPN and A+E (co-owned with Disney).

The Hearst dynasty began in 1887, when William Randolph Hearst acquired the newspaper TI have the San Francisco Daily Examiner and built it into an empire with more than 20 million readers by purchasing other publications under the Hearst Corporation brand.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Hearst Corporation became the world’s largest media conglomerate, earning it harsh criticism for using its diaries to try to influence the politicians of the day.

Probably the most famous criticism of Hearst was the 1941 film “Citizen Kane”, in which Orson Welles portrayed the excesses of the billionaire.

The Mercers

In the world of luxury and excess “Succession”, the Roys are not alone. The show’s creators used secondary characters to include more references to famous families in the United States.

The Mercer family, for example, inspired one of the series’ most involved families in the growing world of online media.

Robert Mercer is a billionaire who became rich through investments in the stock market, and in recent years he has devoted himself to financing the Republican Party (he donated more than 25 million dollars to the campaign of Donald Trump in 2016).

In addition, Robert and his daughter Rebekah have direct investments in Breitbart, one of the most viewed right-wing news portals in the USA.

The Sulzbergers

The creators of the series did not focus only on conservative families.

Magazine vanity fair In 2019, he noted that the family that owns The New York Times newspaper, the Sulzbergers, was the inspiration for one of the Roys’ enemies in the movie “Succession.”

The newspaper began its journey in 1878 with Adolph Ochs, and today, five generations later, it is still in the hands of the family.

AG Sulzerberger was promoted to editor-in-chief of the paper in 2016.

As in the series, in recent years the empire of The New York Times Expanded: In 2022, the company reported that it had grown its paid user base to 10 million.

And just like the TV series, the Times has come under fire for its editorial content, something some analysts link to AG Sulzberger’s role at the paper.

Like in 2020, when the editor of the newspaper’s opinion column, James Bennett, resigned after a scandal broke out in the newsroom due to the publication of a column in which the senator called for military intervention to end the protests that swept the country after the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a police officer.