Everyone from Succession is Heading to the Stage—Your Move, Matthew Macfadyen

Emmys week has brought with it a succession of Succession-related theater news.

The Sydney Theatre Company production of The Picture of Dorian Gray, starring Sarah Snook, is eyeing Broadway after its West End run, while Nicholas Braun will make his West End debut in Lobby Hero. There was also the announcement of the Broadway transfer of Stereophonic, starring Juliana Canfield, who played Kendall’s long-suffering assistant Jess.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Strong is set to make his return to Broadway in An Enemy of the People in March—his first post-Succession project. Elsewhere, Natalie Gold is currently performing on Broadway in Appropriate and Peter Friedman will soon star in a second run of the off-Broadway play Job alongside Sydney Lemmon, who also appeared on the HBO show (you might remember her as Kendall's momentary paramour Jennifer). There’s also, of course, Royal Shakespeare Company veteran Brian Cox, who made his Broadway debut in a 1985 revival of Strange Interlude, and will soon be starring in another Eugene O’Neill play, A Long Day’s Journey into Night, in London. And let’s not forget playwright and Succession executive producer Lucy Prebble, whose play The Effect will open at The Shed in March.

It’s hardly surprising that a majority of the stars of HBO’s riveting business-world tragedy-satire—which played out like a cross between King Lear and an issue of the Wall Street Journal—are now busily treading the boards. But one pressing question remains: When will Matthew Macfadyen make his Broadway debut?

With his doleful eyes, slightly-too-large suits and penchant for lacerating insults—not to mention his deceptively steady rise to power—Macfadyen’s Tom Wambsgans was a firm fan favorite, and Macfadyen himself was always thrilling (and occasionally cringe-inducing) to watch. Nearly a year since the series finale, it’s impossible not to miss Macfadyen’s ingratiating, beta male energy and bone-dry delivery of such exquisitely crafted lines as “Your earlobes are thick and chewy, like barnacle meat” and “You don’t hear much about syphilis these days. Very much the MySpace of STDs.”

Macfadyen, a Norfolk-born Royal Academy of Dramatic Art graduate—whose most celebrated non-Succession screen credit to date remains Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice—is a semi-regular presence on the London stage. He's starred in The Duchess of Malfi, The School for Scandal, Much Ado About Nothing (he played Benedick as a braying buffoon) and Private Lives. He also played Prince Hal in Henry IV, Parts One and Two at the National Theatre and was even the voice of the U.K. department store Harrods for a time.

It’s surely only a matter of time before Macfadyen makes it to Broadway—whether in a frilly period drama or Shakespearean tragedy or something else entirely. Succession fans will be ready for it when it happens. But, look, we'll settle for some Kieran Culkin in the meantime, if you're offering.

For now, we guess he'll just go on pretending that he likes Hamilton.