Over the last week alone, two of the biggest shows on television drew to a close. Succession ended its four-season run on HBO last Sunday and then on Wednesday, AppleTV+'s Ted Lasso wrapped up its third and supposedly final season. Both series ran for a largely overlapping period, making waves as comedy-drama balancing acts, albeit in very different ways. Both shows also share the similarity of being American productions heavily influenced by British writers. Despite their common ground, and their respective ensembles of British and American actors, surprisingly only one actor appears in both series, and as somewhat similar characters too.
Dame Harriet Walter is a British actress and a celebrated icon of the stage and screen. Having trained at London's prestigious drama school, LAMDA, Harriet Walter is known for her extensive work with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her performances throughout her almost 50-year career have earned her an Olivier Award as well as a Tony nomination, a Screen Actors Guild nomination and three Emmy nominations; two for Succession and one for Ted Lasso. Her work has earned her more than awards, however. In 2011, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to drama. Having played Winston Churchill's wife Clementine on Netflix's The Crown, it's quite the coincidence that in Succession, she plays the ex-wife of another actor known for portraying the wartime Prime Minister.
Succession follows Scottish acting legend Brian Cox as Logan Roy, whose sons Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) and daughter Shiv (Sarah Snook) fight to inherit his global news company Waystar Royco. From the show's genesis, it's clear that Logan's inability to express love to his children has shaped them into deeply flawed and troubled narcissists of the most entertaining variety. Their father's influence is only half of the picture in terms of insight into the characters' origins, however. In the first season's final two episodes, Harriet Walter rejoins the cast as Logan's ex-wife and the mother of the three siblings, Lady Caroline Collingwood. Her earned Damehood in real life equips Walter with an aristocratic status perfectly suited to play Caroline and her inherited Ladyship.
Lady Caroline Collingwood Makes Sense of the Roy Children
Lady Caroline is a cold and reserved woman, even with her children, and is proven through the show's subtext to have been the same throughout their upbringing. On HBO's Succession Podcast in July 2020, Sarah Snook recalled the moment she understood that Shiv and her brothers got their acerbic tongues and great wit from their mother. "There's no way of going through that family and growing up in that family and coming out unscathed," she said. "When we met Lady Caroline — when we met Harriet Walter as our mother — that was just like 'oh, of course! Oh my goodness, of course!' That was the piece of the puzzle that we've been missing all this time that just makes sense."
Snook continued by stating, "I do actually think it works when you get two parents like Brian Cox and Harriet Walter, and the characters that they then play, because you go 'yeah actually.' And if that's the way that that family relates to each other, that they deal in barb and assault and witticisms, then yeah, that makes sense that they're arseholes and that it is a competition constantly."
In the series finale, Walter was given the opportunity to show her more maternal side in the final Succession scene they filmed. Her inclusion in a sequence where she scorns the children for eating her new husband's "special cheese" triggers a childlike protest of spite among the siblings that beautifully reminds us of just how stunted these childlike characters are deep down, and how much love they truly have for one another as a result of their shared experiences with their parents.
Harriet Walter is News Media Royalty On- and Off-Screen
Harriet Walter's relationship with news media moguls was nothing new when she joined the cast of Succession as Logan Roy's ex-wife and Waystar shareholder Lady Caroline. Her great-great-great grandfather was John Walter, the founder of The Times in 1785 (which until 1788 was known as The Daily Universal Register). At a 2011 Stationers’ Company Archive Evening, The Times' editor James Harding gave the keynote address in which he spoke of "his pride in the heritage of The Times and its archives, which are a testament to the culture of the newspaper and nurtured by Rupert Murdoch, himself a proud liveryman of the Stationers’ Company." Rupert Murdoch would become the basis and primary inspiration for the character of Logan Roy, making Harriet Walter's natural air of comfort around such figures a perfect fit for her role in Succession. Harriet's maternal uncle also happens to be screen icon Christopher Lee.
'Ted Lasso' Shows Walter as a Millionaire's Mother Again
Harriet Walter's other Emmy-nominated performance was in Ted Lasso, which stars Jason Sudeikis in the titular role of an American college football coach who is hired to manage an English football team in London. The opportunity comes about when the team's previous owner Rupert (Anthony Head) loses his beloved AFC Richmond to his ex-wife Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) in the divorce. As further punishment for Rupert's adultery, Rebecca hires Ted to unwittingly ruin the club's reputation beyond repair, only to find his skills and personality beneficial to both Richmond and her own personal betterment. Although Rebecca works as the show's villain in the first season, she soon mellows, and the second season introduces us to her mother, where once again, Harriet Walter helps us understand why her daughter is the way she is.
Rebecca's mother Deborah is introduced in Season 2's sixth episode, adamant she's leaving Rebecca's father for good this time, due to his unfaithfulness. In the season's 10th episode she returns for her husband's funeral. Her well-adjusted coping mechanisms for such situations aren't a world away from Lady Caroline's story, however, one way in which the two characters differ is in their parenting styles. Walter acts a perfect foil for Rebecca and the Roys respectively, providing the tough love she deems necessary to help them navigate their worlds. Thankfully, Rebecca (a millionaire business owner as opposed to Succession's billionaires with a capital B) is allowed a much more sympathetic form of love from her mother.
Harriet Walter is an Actor's Actor
Hannah Waddingham said of Walter, "Even though I had been in this show for a year and set up who Rebecca was and was quite comfortable in that, it rocked me to have her come in because I think so highly of her." The two actors seemingly found their complex but loving relationship in no time at all. "She and I had just a tunnel through to each other," Waddingham added. When much of Ted Lasso's Season 2 cast became Emmy-nominated for their work on the show, Waddingham stated, "For them to be recognized is absolutely as it should be. And secondly, I hope people realize what beautiful people have been nominated. They're all absolute bangers of personalities and work so hard, and have always worked so hard. Particularly [...] Dame Harriet."
It's famously difficult for actors to join an already established cast later in a show's run, but it seems Harriet Walter's inclusion as characters' mothers serves to sharpen perceptions of the characters themselves, both for the actors and the audience. A veteran of her craft, the Dame's underappreciated performances heighten both shows, which is no small feat given their enormous critical and viewership success even before she appeared in either series.
She is such an important part of Rebecca and the Roy children's personalities that evidently the showrunners felt it would be criminal not to include her in their shows' climaxes. In the Ted Lasso finale, she is seen giving Rebecca advice on moving on, while in Succession's final episode, she seems to finally adopt the role of mother these adult children needed 40 years earlier. In short, her unique brand of "mom with no time for your petty issues" has proven superbly successful for shows recently, and as well as her Damehood, Harriet Walter is awarded the title of TV's Mom-V-P.