The rich are terrible with food, contrary to what the Downton Christmas specials would have us believe. On HBO’s hit family drama Succession, food only brings misery and gives everyone ‘the shits’ as patriarch Logan Roy would say. Of course, everything the Roys eat is totally lavish and most likely sourced from Michelin-caliber kitchens, but it rarely sparks any joy or even fulfilment (Season 3 spoilers below!).
In Season 3, the food symbolism is obvious and tense. But it’s also hilarious. Tom Wambsgans is seen gleefully opening a bottle of ‘bio-dynamic’ wine from his own vineyard, to share with his wife Shiv Roy (who is streaming a news bite that screams, ‘elites are running the country to the ground’). The wine is, of course, terrible and the couple uses ridiculous adjectives to describe it, like ‘vegetal,’ and ‘agricultural.’. “You’ve got to meet it halfway,” Tom says about its taste. The same can also be said of his failing, borderline transactional marriage.
If they were honest about how bad the wine was, it would suggest their interest in fine-tuning its flavour. But the Roys would never actually drink the eco-friendly wine themselves, they’d probably use it for commercial or vanity purposes. Much like Shiv and Tom’s marriage, it’s quite the sham. The show weaponises food to spotlight individual anxieties. This is why food is rarely seen or witnessed on the show, there are no close-ups or focused, drool-worthy shots for the audience’s benefit.
Lady Caroline Collingwood at the lunch table @succession/Twitter
In fact, some of the food is plated to look severe or even threatening. Shiv and Roman’s lunch with their mother Caroline at her castle (yes, castle) just constituted three aggressive cuts of blotchy pigeon in a dark blue bowl. “Mind how you go or you’ll crack a tooth,” Lady Caroline Collingwood warned her son.
This is a common pattern in Succession where food has often been used to bully or berate. “How much is a gallon of milk?” Logan Roy shouted at his children during a season 2 dinner. In the same episode, Logan makes his family members kneel and fight for a sausage to smoke out who’s leaking business secrets. “Oink for your sausages, piggies!” exclaimed the patriarch.
In the pilot episode, Connor Roy — widely considered to be the most underachieving Roy — gifts his father a sourdough starter, which is the worst possible thing to give an octogenarian media mogul. Logan neither has the time nor the patience to cultivate wild yeast to make bread. Logan is obviously baffled at the white dough rolling around in Tupperware and things get very, very awkward.
Any other father could probably tell their son it was a terrible gift, but there’s really no telling how billionaire fathers scold their millionaire children. Maybe they do use food as a weapon. The showrunners, too, admitted they had to recruit wealth consultants just to get an idea of what mega-rich families are like. “This big American drama was written by a group of scruffy, shambolic British comedy writers who were excited that someone was paying for their Pret sandwich,” producer Georgia Pritchett joked recently.
Succession also uses food to point out class anxieties in ‘outsiders.’ Tom and Greg enjoy deep-fried ortolan, which is a forbidden delicacy and use a napkin to mask their faces, as per tradition. They discuss their white-collar crimes over extravagant food with napkins over their heads. The show deliberately makes them look ridiculous and gauche, to highlight their desperation of fitting in. It kind of circles back in Season 3 when Tom orders food at a diner so he can fit into prison because he actually thinks diner omelettes will prepare him for an incarcerated life.
The Roy family was reportedly inspired by media magnate Rupert Murdoch and his brood. Maybe the Murdochs too make work decisions over dinner, like any other business family. But it’s safe to assume large, shareable truffle-topped pepperoni pizzas rarely remain untouched at any family lunch unless it’s at the Roy’s Hamptons mansion. So, maybe billionaires need some work-life coaching too?