‘I have a lot of sympathy for Elon Musk’: Succession creator Jesse Armstrong on his tech bros AI satire Mountainhead | Mountainhead

When he will get to his London workplace on the morning this piece is revealed, Jesse Armstrong will learn it in print, or under no circumstances. Although the constructing has wifi, he doesn’t use it. “In the event you’re a procrastinator, which most writers are, it’s only a killer.” On-line rabbit holes swallow entire days. “In the long run, it’s higher to be left with the inadequacies of your ideas.” He offers himself a mock pep discuss. “‘It’s simply you and me now, mind.’”At this time, the showrunner of Succession and co-creator of Peep Present is again at house, in strolling distance of his workspace. He could possibly be any London dad: 54, salt-and-pepper beard, summer season striped T-shirt. However staying offline might really feel like a press release too, given Armstrong can be the writer-director of Mountainhead, a movie about tech bros. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Open AI’s Sam Altman, guru financiers Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen: all these and extra are blended up within the film’s characters, sharing a comic book grasp in a ski mansion. Outdoors, an AI launched by one of many group has sparked world chaos. Inside, there may be snippy friction concerning the intra-billionaire pecking order.It have to be pleasant to essentially imagine it’s all going to be high-quality, that AI’s going to remedy cancerMountainhead seems like a pulled-back curtain. However Armstrong additionally resisted one other rabbit gap: spending time in Silicon Valley for analysis. He tried that form of factor earlier than. Opposite to hearsay, Succession by no means did contain backdoor chats with the kids of Rupert Murdoch. As soon as the present turned a phenomenon, although, he did meet with masters of finance and company media, selecting their brains for insights at luxe New York eating places. “They usually’d be charismatic, and namedrop the 20 most well-known individuals on this planet, and I’d really feel this buzz of pleasure by affiliation. Then later I’d take a look at my notes, and what they’d truly stated learn like full inane bullshit. ‘Make the transfer!’ ‘Be the balls!’”Ski mansion schemers … from left, Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef and Jason Schwartzman in Mountainhead. {Photograph}: HBO/2025 Residence Field Workplace, Inc. All Rights Reserved.So Armstrong returned to his workplace and, extra usually, his form. “I’m a author,” he says, “and a author kind. And I’m proud of different author sorts.” In America, when Succession exploded, you can sense an assumption the thoughts behind it have to be an English Aaron Sorkin: a slick character as glamorous because the world he wrote about. As a substitute, right here was the dry determine who compares making Mountainhead to an early job at price range grocery store Kwik Save. (Each, he says, boiled all the way down to managing workload.)Somewhat than stalk Sam Altman, he learn biographies and hoovered up podcasts. Amid the oligarchs’ tales of favorite Roman emperors, he stored discovering a standard thread: a wilful positivity about their very own impact on the world. “And it have to be pleasant to essentially imagine, ‘You realize what? It’s going to be high-quality. AI’s going to remedy most cancers, and don’t fear about burning up the planet powering the AI to do it, as a result of we’ll simply repair that too.’”A part of the trick, he says, is perspective. At a sure degree, cash and energy give life the texture of an everlasting view from a personal airplane. “Whereas actuality is standing within the street, dodging automobiles, considering ‘Oh God! That is fucking terrifying!’”Success and Succession haven’t made Armstrong an optimist. However they did give him the skilled heft to direct Mountainhead in addition to write it, and to take action at unprecedented tempo. Movie and TV transfer achingly slowly; it was final November that he determined he wished to make a film concerning the junction of AI, crypto and libertarian politics. By Could, he was getting ready for it to come back out.He says now he wished Mountainhead to be “a bobsleigh run. Brief, and barely bitter, and when you’re on, you’re on.” His voice quickens recalling a primary assembly with Steve Carell, who he wished to play Randall, “the group’s darkish cash Gandalf”. This was January. With no script, Armstrong might solely inform the actor the story he’d loosely deliberate. Carell sat in silence. “I believed, ‘Nicely, this has gone very badly.’” Then he stated sure. “At which level it was like, ‘Fuck. That is truly going to occur. Now I’ve to write down it.’”Cocooned world … Succession. {Photograph}: Residence Field Workplace/Graeme HunterBy March, the movie was being shot in a 21,000 sq ft mansion in Deer Valley, Utah, then available on the market for $65m. Carell apart, the solid included Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef and Jason Schwartzman. For Armstrong, directing his first characteristic on a berserk turnaround was made simpler by a deep fondness for actors. Standing in entrance of a digicam, he says, paralyses him with self-consciousness. “So I actually discover what they do magical.”His personal lack of expertise as a performer proved essential to the youthful Armstrong. Between 1995 and 1997, he labored as an assistant to Labour MP Doug Henderson. It was an attention-grabbing time to have the job, with Tony Blair about to enter Downing Road. Is there a Sliding Doorways world the place a rising star assistant turns into an MP himself? One the place, by now, Jesse Armstrong is house secretary?He shakes his head for a number of seconds. “I simply wasn’t good on the job. Essentially, I didn’t perceive politics.” He is aware of it sounds odd, having later written for insidery Westminster comedy The Thick of It. “However I couldn’t do the performing. I didn’t get it. I all the time thought like a author, so in conferences the place I ought to have been constructing my profession, I’d simply be considering, ‘That’s bizarre. That’s humorous. Why did you say that?’” (Armstrong as soon as wrote for the Guardian a few assembly with then Conservative minister Ann Widdecombe, by which she sat below two posters: one a lurid anti-abortion message, the opposite Garfield.)You possibly can see Tremendous Hans arriving at Mountainhead on a scooter, delivering the ketamineInstead, he segued into comedy, and shortly after Peep Present, the beloved squirm of a sitcom co-written with Sam Bain. At first look, Succession is the apparent prequel to Mountainhead, a former newspaper empire giving approach to tech superpower. However Armstrong sees a more in-depth hyperlink between his new movie and Peep Present: “As a result of it’s about males, and male hierarchies, and the pathos of males making an attempt to attach.”He’s tickled by the considered his personal story world, by which characters from completely different tasks collide. “You possibly can see Tremendous Hans arriving at Mountainhead on a scooter, delivering the ketamine.” Then he pauses, all of the sudden anxious. May he be sure I’ll point out Bain if I discuss Peep Present? “As a result of it was all the time Sam’s present as properly.” And Hans owed a lot to actor Matt King too, he says, “after which, after all, there’s David Mitchell and Robert Webb.”Ought to Armstrong ever make an Oscar acceptance speech, we can be there some time. Ensuring due credit score is given is of a bit along with his near-pathological modesty. (He’s a eager footballer. Which place? “Horrible.”) Being fair-minded issues too. He provides a postscript to his reminiscence of leaving Westminster. “I’d additionally say I don’t in any approach really feel superior to individuals who do make a profession in politics. I nonetheless imagine we’d like good, skilled politicians.”Turning again to Mountainhead, his even-handedness reaches a form of occasion horizon. Armstrong, it transpires, feels sorry for Elon Musk. “Musk has performed large injury on this planet, notably with Doge, however I’ve a variety of sympathy for him.” The proprietor of X was brutally bullied as a schoolboy and in line with a 2023 biography, had a troublesome relationship along with his father. “This can be a traumatised human being,” says Armstrong. Nonetheless, not each bullied youngster finally ends up making obvious Nazi salutes onstage. “Yeah. That wasn’t nice.”Ivory tower … with Steve Carell on the Mountainhead shoot. {Photograph}: Macall Polay/PRBut there are different sides to Armstrong. For all of the hints of bumble and awkwardness, he has additionally had the self-discipline to construct a stellar profession. And the extra measured he’s in particular person, the extra Mountainhead feels just like the work of a grinning Id, rising as much as take a scalpel to his topics, with their pretensions to philosophy, and darkish indifference to life. (“I’m so enthusiastic about these atrocities,” a personality beams because the world goes violently awry.) However his sympathy has its limits. “I do suppose the cocoon they’re in makes it laborious for them to recollect different persons are truly actual. However they’ve additionally been fast to surrender making an attempt. And a few positively really feel the superior particular person shouldn’t need to attempt anyway.”Extra to the purpose, although, Armstrong finds the tech moguls humorous. A lot of the grimness of a Musk or Thiel can be brilliantly ridiculous: the epic lack of self-knowledge, the thinness of pores and skin. Having studied them as he has, would he anticipate his real-life fashions to be enraged by the movie? “Oh no. They’d immediately dismantle it in a approach that will be 50% fully honest, and 50% completely facile. However they wouldn’t see any reality to it.”Nonetheless, Mountainhead is one thing very uncommon: a film that feels as modern as TikTok. For Armstrong, after Succession and now this, you may suppose tales concerning the second had grow to be addictive. He frowns. Is a interval piece subsequent, in reality? Victorian bonnets? “Perhaps. Genuinely possibly. As a result of I’m not truly that drawn to ripped-from-the-headlines concepts.” The frown deepens. “Am I not? I don’t know. I’m dropping religion in my very own reply, as a result of I evidently am. I imply, I’m not going to say I don’t like writing about proper now. However actually, on the similar time – I’d be happy to get out of it.” Mountainhead is obtainable to personal digitally now