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In April 2019,The New York Times published a three-part investigation about the legacy ofRupert Murdoch that, among a number of juicy revelations, exposed the media moguls attempts to ease tensions among his children through group therapy sessions, including a therapeutic retreat at the family ranch in Australia. Roughly nine months earlier, a very similar scene played out on television screens during the first season ofSuccession. In Austerlitz, the HBO dramas seventh episode, the fictional Roy family begrudgingly gathered in New Mexico for a therapy session after middle son Kendalls failed attempt to knock his father, Logan, from poweronly to discover that the whole gathering was a publicity stunt.

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Successions creative team might not have realised they were so closely mirroring reality when they filmed that episode, but the goal has always been to tell a story that felt like it could be happening in real life too. If you read theFinancial Times andWall Street Journal, youd have a good sense of where we thought the show would go because its trying to reflect the world, show creator Jesse ArmstrongtoldThe New Yorker in February, when he also announced thatSuccessions upcoming fourth season would be its last. Indeed, many ofSuccessions characters and plotlines can be traced back to real people and events. Over the years, the show has employed journalists and writersmedia columnistFrank Rich is an executive producer, and novelistGary Shteyngart and business journalistMerissa Marr have served as consultantsto aid in the accuracy of its world-building.

Successions third season ended more than a year ago with the often at-odds Roy siblingsKendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin)teaming up to try to stop their father (Brian Cox) from selling the family business. But an eleventh-hour heel turn from Shivs husband, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), foiled their plans. HBO is keeping a tight lid on the events of the shows final seasonbeyond dropping a few breadcrumbs ina new trailerbut if previous seasons are any indication, there will be more than a few similarities to recent current events. Ahead, a breakdown of the real-world influences for the fictional world ofSuccession.

Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy, Sarah Snook as Shiv Roy, and Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy.

Armstrong has said that he drew fromseveraldynastic familiesincluding the Redstones, the Sulzbergers, and the Hearstswhen creating the Roys. But none appear to have been more influential than the Murdochs. In fact, Armstrong first beganmining the lives of the rich and powerful for satire with a screenplay calledMurdoch, which imagined the family convening for the birthday of Rupert Murdoch. Itmade the rounds in Hollywood, even landing on the Black List of top unproduced screenplays in2010, but was never made.

Armstronghas said thatMurdoch is deeply in the background ofSuccession,its clear that his work on the former informed the latter. Like the Murdochs, the Roys are a patriarchal family with control over a large media conglomerate. Waystar Royco, which the Roys like to boast is the fifth-largest media company in the world, controls a Fox Newsesque conservative cable network called ATN; several newspapers; and a theme park and cruise ship business. Murdoch, meanwhile, has prevailed over News Corpa powerful print media business whose tentacles reach as far as the UK and Australiaand an entertainment business that, at its height, included broadcast and cable networks, a film and television studio, a live entertainment division, and an Indian television provider.

Even the family structures of the Murdochs and the Roys are similar. Rupert Murdoch has six children from his first three marriages, including an older daughter,Prudence, who has largely avoided wading into the power struggle that has consumed the three children from his second marriage:Elisabeth,Lachlan, andJames. The Roy Family, meanwhile, is made up of oldest son Connor (Alan Ruck)who instead of working for the family business announces a presidential campaign in the second seasonand his three younger siblings, who each believe they have what it takes to succeed their father as CEO of Waystar Royco.

Rupert Murdoch put to rest the succession questions swirling around his family in 2017, when he announced that he would sell much of his entertainment assets to Disney in adeal worth $71.3 billion.Following the sale, his oldest son, Lachlan, was named CEO of adiminished Fox Corp. In season three ofSuccession, Logan made a similar play, revealing that instead of naming one of his children as his successor, he planned to sell the company to (fictional) tech giant GoJo.

Holly Hunter as Rhea Jarrell, and Cherry Jones as Nan Pierce.

The introduction of the Pierce family in season two allowed Armstrong and his creative team to create an old-money foil for the nouveau riche Roys. Led by matriarch Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones), the Pierces operate a multi-billion media company that owns left-leaning news network PGM. Those blue-blooded fucks, as Logan calls them, appear to be a blend ofpublishing families the Sulzbergers and the Bancrofts.

The Sulzberger family owns TheNew York Times, passing the role of publisher down to each new generation. (A.G. Sulzberger is the newspaper of records current publisher.) The Bancrofts, meanwhile, are the Boston socialites who soldWall Street Journal owner Dow Jones & Company to Murdochs News Corporation in 2007. InSuccessions second season, Logan makes his own move to acquire Pierce Global Media, but isnt as successful as his real-life counterpartthough the trailer for season four suggests Nan and her haughty clan will be back for a final showdown.

Alexander Skarsgrd as Lukas Matsson.

ThoughSuccession has occasionally ventured into the world of tech (see Vaulter below), it remained largely focused on legacy media until the introduction ofAlexander Skarsgrds temperamental tech mogul in season three. The billionaire CEO of streaming powerhouse GoJo enters the story first as a potential acquisition target. But by the end of the season, its clear that he has bigger aims from his dealings with the Roys. Because ofSkarsgrds Swedish heritage, themost obvious likely inspiration for his character is Spotify cofounder and CEODaniel Ekeven if GoJo appears to be a mix of Netflix, FanDuel, and Facebook. Matssons ruthless dealmakingand erratic tweetingsuggest hes also modelled at least in part onElon Musk.

Introduced in the third season, during a secretive Republican conclave where the partys leadersincluding Logan and his childrenselect their next presidential candidate, Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk) isSuccessions take on what comes afterDonald Trump. The shows sitting presidenta man never shown and only ever referred to as The Raisinseems to be a composite of Trump and a more traditional conservative president, and Gil Eavis (Eric Bogosian), the Democratic senator who wants to hire Shiv in season two, is an apparentBernie Sandersstand-in. Mencken, meanwhile, is an alt-right congressman whom Shiv refers to as a YouTube provocateur, suggesting the writers modelled him after conservative media personalities likeJordan Peterson and members of the far-right Freedom Caucus. Mencken is considered a dark horse in the presidential race until Logan decides to back him, perhaps a reference to Murdochs then close alliance with Trump.

The digital-media start-up that appeared during the first two seasons ofSuccession was so clearly modelled after Vice Media that even the struggling publisher had toacknowledge the similarities. The edgy internet publisher founded by Lawrence Yee (Rob Yang) that sold to Waystar Royco had all the hallmarks of mid-2000s new media brands, from the sleek open floor plan office to the company-owned beehives. Eventhe articles that Vaulter publishes5 Reasons Why Drinking Milk on the Toilet Is Kind of a Game-Changer and Wait, Is Every Taylor Swift Lyric Secretly Marxist?would feel right at home on the BuzzFeed or Gawker websites of yore. And Kendalls interest in the company even provides more evidence that the Roys are inspired by the Murdochs; James Murdochjoined the Vice board in 2013 after Fox acquired a stake in the business.

Though Vaulter doesnt survive its saleor the pivot-to-video era that rocked every major media outletSuccession isnt entirely done skewering the digital-media world. Keep an eye out for a not-so-subtle dig at sites like Axios and Semafor in theupcoming season.

This article first appeared on Vanityfair.com

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Succession: The real people who inspired the HBO hit - VOGUE India