Jesse Armstrong, the creative force behind HBO’s critically acclaimed drama Succession, has opened up about his ongoing struggles with impostor syndrome—even after years of celebrated success. In a candid conversation on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, aired January 11, 2026, Armstrong reflected on his journey as a screenwriter, the unique energy of a writers’ room, and the challenges of maintaining distance from the cast of his hit show.
Armstrong, 55, is no stranger to accolades. He’s an Oscar nominee for co-writing the satirical film In The Loop and a recipient of multiple TV Baftas for his work on Peep Show and Succession. Despite these achievements, Armstrong was frank about the self-doubt that continues to shadow his creative process. As reported by The Standard and The Guardian, he admitted, “All the good writers I know that I’ve ever met are riddled with self-doubt and lack of certainty about whether what they’ve just done is good.”
For many viewers, Succession was more than just a television series—it was a cultural phenomenon. Starring Brian Cox as the formidable Logan Roy, the show chronicled the power struggles among his four children, played by Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, and Alan Ruck. The series also featured memorable performances by Matthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun. Over its four-season run, which concluded in 2023, Succession scooped up 19 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series, and nine Golden Globes, cementing its place in television history.
But behind the scenes, Armstrong’s experience was far from effortless. He described the magic—and the pressure—of working in a writers’ room at its best: “When a writers’ room is working well, it’s like you’re walking on the moon. You’re suddenly released from the thing that could take you a week to figure out at your desk on your own. You’re suddenly bounding around and picking up rocks and everything’s veined with gold and it’s like you can have these golden moments of the ideas coming from everyone and you’re all on the same wavelength and it can feel quite magical.”
Yet, Armstrong was quick to point out that writing is not always so uplifting. “You can get really good days and hours working writing alone, but when it’s not working and you feel you’re not going to equal the best version of the thing you’re trying to make, I would find that very, very difficult,” he confessed. “The theoretically consoling idea that ‘oh, it’ll be all right because you’ve done it before’, actually becomes another rod for your back.”
He elaborated on the hidden labor behind the polished scripts: “You don’t know how possible it is for me to be a really bad writer because you don’t see all these drafts where it’s really bad. There might be 50 so-called drafts, but they’re not really drafts.” For Armstrong, the creative process is as much about wrestling with uncertainty as it is about chasing inspiration.
Despite the show’s immense popularity and critical acclaim, Armstrong revealed that he deliberately maintained a professional distance from the cast during Succession’s production. He explained, “I find it much harder to leave the actors, who I felt you had to keep a certain distance from. There’s a professional necessity. You don’t know what’s going to happen in a TV show and I didn’t know what would happen at what point through the life of it, and so it’s kind in a way, to keep a certain respectful distance.”
While parting ways with the actors was difficult, Armstrong said he found it less challenging to let go of the characters themselves. “The characters – honestly, I don’t feel this in a callous way, but I hardly give them a thought. They were very, very intensely real to me, but as soon as we leave, as we did in the final episode, Kendall (Roy), who’s the younger one of the sons, leave him on the tip of Manhattan, my interest in him, honestly, has ended. It’s not brutal, it’s tender. I love him, but creatively, the story is over and he’s not real to me any more in that regard.”
Armstrong’s honesty about impostor syndrome offers a rare glimpse into the vulnerabilities that even the most successful writers face. He said, “I think you go in maybe with this 70% feeling that it’s like, ‘oh, this is going to be a disaster and I’m going to be exposed as the fraud I always thought I was all along’. You need that 10-20% – if you’re lucky, 30% – feeling of, ‘if I could do the version of this which I think it should be, it could be really great’. I think maybe that little bit of confidence that you know that that’s how it feels, maybe that grows in you. Also, knowing that the negative feelings are not necessarily true.”
His reflections echo a sentiment shared by many in the creative industries: that uncertainty and self-doubt are often inseparable from the pursuit of excellence. Armstrong’s willingness to speak openly about these struggles is likely to resonate with writers and artists everywhere—no matter how many awards line their shelves.
Beyond Succession, Armstrong’s career continues to flourish. He was a key figure behind the 2010 satirical comedy Four Lions and has recently worked on the film Mountainhead, which follows a group of billionaire friends working in tech, played by Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, and Ramy Youssef, as they gather amid a series of international crises. This latest project demonstrates Armstrong’s ongoing commitment to sharp, character-driven storytelling, even as he navigates the ever-present doubts that come with the territory.
For fans eager to hear more from Armstrong, the full Desert Island Discs interview is available on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4. In the hour-long conversation with Lauren Laverne, Armstrong delves deeper into his creative process, his experiences on Succession, and the personal challenges that have shaped his career.
As the conversation with Armstrong makes clear, success in the arts is rarely a cure for self-doubt. If anything, those nagging questions about one’s own abilities may simply evolve with each new project, regardless of past triumphs. Armstrong’s story is a reminder that, for many creatives, the journey is as much about learning to live with uncertainty as it is about chasing the next big idea.
