‘Jesse Armstrong injects steroids into how people use and abuse power': Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef on working with Succession creator in Mountainhead

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, who produced and wrote the Emmy Award-winning show, is all set to make his directorial debut with Mountainhead, a film also about a pack of crazy, perverse, self-consumed billionaires. Four of the wealthiest billionaires of America meet at a weekend villa on a mountain head as the world goes to war, thanks to their capitalistic excesses. The title is a cheeky take on Ayn Rand's 1943 seminal book The Fountainhead, and a character even refers to the interior designer of the mountain-head villa as Ayn Bland.
In an exclusive interview with SCREEN, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef, who play two of the four billionaires, talk about working with Jesse Armstrong, the tone-deafness of the modern billionaire, and how Elon Musk-like tech billionaires are shaking things up.
I love the scene in which the four of you, all billionaires, scale up a snow-clad mountain, write your respective net worth on your bare chests, and then scream that at the top of your lungs. Do you feel like a billionaire needs to have a bit of crazy in them?
Cory: (Laughs) That's a great question! Do they need to be? No, they can be. That much money just protects you from your own behaviour and failures. Not physically, if you mess up your money, otherwise in terms of personal behaviour, you're allowed to do a lot, which is a problem.
Ramy: Ya, you're allowed to remain a child or whatever it is that you want. And I just want to tell you that the scene, that you describe so brilliantly, it was so cold! And I just want you to know that.
After watching Succession and working with him in Mountainhead, what is it about Jesse Armstrong that he gets the elite, the entitled, the wealthy so right?
Ramy: He knows how people talk. That's really interesting because that's not how he talks. He's not writing what he knows. He's one of the kindest people I've worked with, especially considering how brilliant he is. It's all in the dialogue. We get scripts all the time to act in, and usually it takes what, 15 pages to figure out what it is. With Jesse, you'll have it known in five minutes. Because it's so clear.
Cory: Yeah, and he injects steroids in the way people use and abuse power. He's able to write it in a really disturbing and entertaining way, unlike anybody else.
I read a review which referred to Mountainhead as 'White Lotus winter retreat.' Do you see that parallel? And how do you think the singular setting of a luxurious villa atop a snow mountain add to the film's themes?
Ramy: People just tend to compare things with other things that just came out because our memories are getting shorter by the moment. So I don't see that link, but what I do see is the isolation allows these guys to not want to confront their feelings. But because there's an actual and a metaphorical blizzard around them, they're confined to face their feelings in a way they don't want to. That makes the pressure cooker really unique and fun.
Cory: And unlike The White Lotus, and to the disappointment of a lot of viewers, it's also not very romantic (laughs).
Also Read | Succession: Bidding goodbye to one of the greatest television dramas of our time
Cory, your character in the film defends the misinformation on his social media platform Tram (Twitter + Instagram?) by arguing that when movies were first made, the audience thought the train on the screen is going to hit them. But the solution was not to stop making movies, but make as many, and of different kinds. Do you agree with that justification?
Cory: Generally, if you barrage people with so much information, it confuses, scares, and irritates them. They get a little sensory overload. They can't process all of it. Ya, we see that happening in our culture in a lot of respects.
Ramy: Yeah, and I don't believe in trying to stop technology, mainly because that's impossible. So I'm an accelerationist to a level. But we'll have to figure out our own boundaries in terms of technology. We needed to do that even before this AI boom anyway. I think people will look back at this time and get shocked at how much we were on our phones because there'll be a new etiquette, a new way of interacting with these things. Hopefully, in a place where there isn't any tech at all. That's the best option!
Cory: That's so optimistic I may have to choose not to believe it.
Mountainhead drops on Jio Hotstar this Sunday on June 1.

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