Dagmara Dominczyk was on the spectacular Norway set of Succession and knew who she had to FaceTime: her father, who had returned to his native Poland after raising Dominczyk and her sisters in the United States. “He said, ‘Oh, the Norwegians are so good. They are so direct, they’re so warm, they’re good people,” she remembers. “‘Oh, Dagy, I’m so happy you’re there.’ And I felt so close to him.”
A conversation with Dominczyk, who plays Waystar Royco’s steely PR exec Karolina, circles back to her father often these days. He died suddenly in February, just days before Dominczyk filmed her final scenes on Succession. Many actors talk about a grieving process when they finish work on a long-running series, but for Dominczyk it’s on another level entirely. “It’s really art mirroring life in the worst fucking way,” she says of the season that, of course, revolves around the Roy children dealing with the loss of their own patriarch. “But in a way, it was a gift. It was like all the goodbyes at once, and then the time to sit with that.”
Dominczyk kept the horrible echo between her life and the show to herself — even her husband Patrick Wilson didn’t know about Logan’s death until it aired on HBO. But she was in good hands on set in those early days of grief. “I knew I was walking into a really safe symbolic hug, like a cocoon of people who would just help me get through the day,” she says. “And so my last shot in the last episode was the day after my dad died. And hopefully Karolina doesn’t look like shit.”
Like so many of the other Waystar execs, Karolina often fades into the background of a scene, on hand to glare at a corporate rival like Fisher Stevens’s Hugo or raise an almost imperceptible eyebrow while yet another catastrophe unfolds. In episode 5, however, she survives an “ambush” brunch with the GoJo team and then, with Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), is spared from the acquiring company’s “kill list.” She’s open to speculation about how Karolina and Gerri might have schemed to make the cut together, while of course staying mum about future episodes. She also knows about an improvised scene with Gerri in the sauna that didn’t make the episode’s final cut, but might have been the real moment that tipped the scales.
Below, Dominczyk reveals just what happened in that scene; how Karolina wound up greeting her rival, Ebba, in Swedish; and what Karolina and Gerri might be up to when they get away from the Roy family.
Vanity Fair: Thank you for even talking about Succession, because that seems like it must be so hard.
Dagmara Dominczyk: No, it’s okay. I mean, it’s life. And oddly, this whole year has been about this huge figure on our show finally dying. And also keeping that under wraps from my family and friends, because they’re huge Succession fans. My husband never wants to know. He knows if I’m traveling somewhere—“Oh, you’re going to Norway? Why?”
You didn’t tell him about Logan?
No. I would come home and be like, “Oh, my God, Brian was such a pill on set today,” keeping up the ruse. And so when my own dad died, I still didn’t tell anyone about Logan’s death. My husband was down in Atlanta doing some reshoots when episode three aired. He texted me like, “Oh, my God, Dag.” So it’s been a really strange last few months.
So should we talk about going to Norway? I know you’ve got kids. How do you make that kind of work travel work?
With this one, Patrick was home so that was much easier. And we also kind of knew this was our last big trip together [for Succession]. The trips that we go on are so fun. The show really takes care of us abroad. And to be able to experience all these beautiful places together with a group of people you really get along with, while working on a really cool show, that’s just been a real blessing and a cherry on top. So Norway was amazing. I’d never been to Scandinavia, and it was so great.