Justine Lupe thought there was no way she’d ever be able to top the experience of playing Willa on HBO’s Succession. Then she got cast as Morgan, one of the “loser siblings” on the runaway Netflix hit Nobody Wants This. They are two very different roles on two very different shows, but she says on this episode of The Last Laugh podcast that she feels extremely “lucky” to get the opportunity to show both comedic and dramatic sides of herself on each.
Fresh off of wrapping filming for Season 2 of Nobody Wants This, Lupe talks about the pressure of satisfying fan expectations for her character’s complicated relationship with Timothy Simons’ Sascha. And she opens up about her deeply rewarding experience on Succession, which was only supposed to be a handful of episodes before Willa became a central character, and even part of the Roy family, all the way until the very end.
It’s been just about two years since the world said goodbye to Succession and Lupe is finally starting to recover from the “devastating” experience of having to say goodbye to both her character Willa and the lifelong friends she made over the course of the show’s four seasons.
Willa, the possibly paid girlfriend of the eldest Roy sibling Connor (Alan Ruck), was only meant to be in a couple of episodes during the show’s first season. One reason Lupe was so sure her time on the show was limited was because she auditioned with a breakup scene. But then creator Jesse Armstrong just kept bringing Willa back. “I just remember being like, we’re not going to say anything, don’t mention it, just pretend that this is normal,” she jokes now.
Unlike some other major characters, Lupe’s Willa ended up staying part of the show until the bitter end, with the “Connor’s Wedding” episode in Season 4 serving as a confirmation of her role as one of the show’s core characters. By the end of the series, Connor’s long shot bid for the presidency is dead, he’s poised to be ambassador to Slovenia in a new ultra-right-wing administration and Willa is contemplating life as a conservative political wife.
As for what happened to the couple after that, Lupe says she’s “rooting for them” but also recognizes how hard marriage can be for someone who is “so selfish” at her core. She doesn’t see a world where Willa gives up on her dream of success in the theater, despite how horribly it went for her the first time around.
“But it depends on what you think is a successful relationship,” she adds. “Because I look at Donald Trump and I look at Melania Trump, and I feel like they live incredibly separate lives. I think she is just living in this world of self-care and maintenance, and he’s on his own thing, and they touch base every once in a while.” In a sense, she says that is a “successful relationship” because “they are still together.”
“So maybe there is a world where Connor and Willa can exist,” Lupe adds. “They just have a long leash between them.” Like Melania Trump, Willa “just does her own thing, and he’s off in a different place, and they come back and forth every once in a while. That’s a relationship. But is it the one I want? No.”
The characters of Succession may only exist in our collective imagination now, but the future of Nobody Wants This is palpable for Lupe and her fellow actors, who just finished filming the show’s hotly anticipated season season, which arrives on Netflix Oct. 23.
Lupe “would be lying” if she said she and the rest of the Nobody Wants This team wasn’t feeling more pressure to deliver on Season 2 now that the show is a bona fide success. “When you think about how many eyes will be on it and the pressure of living up to what we did last season, if you think too much about it, it just like can be paralyzing,” she says. “So I really tried not to go there too much. But it wasn’t easy, because I’m a neurotic person and my brain does quite often go to the worst case scenario.”
Without giving too much away, Lupe says she has a “bit more responsibility this season” as Morgan. “There are some really fun scenarios with my character, but I also was like, oh, if I f--- this up, then I really f--- this up.”
When Lupe’s co-star Timothy Simons was on The Last Laugh podcast around the show’s first season premiere, he addressed the fans who were already clamoring for the two “loser siblings” to get together—despite the fact that Simons’ Sascha is married on the show.
“A lot of people really want to see that explored more, and some people are like, don’t you dare get them together,” Simons said at the time. “And some people, including the two of us, are like, I don’t know if it’s super funny to break up a family.”
Lupe tells me that even she and Simons were “confused” about the nature of their characters’ relationship while filming Season 1, “but I actually think that it served the dynamic, because the characters are confused.”
“If we were to step past the friend line, what would that say about Morgan?” she asks. While the “anticipation” of affairs can be “fun and sexy,” Lupe thinks the messy reality would not work out great on screen. “There’s nothing cute or sweet or endearing about it,” she adds. “Both of us were rooting for a friendship rather than a crossing of the line.”
Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
