The Roys Summer in Italy

On location with the cast of ‘Succession,’ the most interestingly terrible billionaires on TV.

- Hunter Harris

YOU ARE CORDIALLY invited to a Roy-family gathering at a 13-bedroom 17th-century Tuscan villa. The house is the color of cream silk with an imposing entrance that seems to demand a suitable 23andMe result for one to be allowed in. It sits in the middle of a garden lined with shrubs and dotted with Baroque sculptures. Past a 300-meter stretch of cypress trees, a trio of long banquet tables have been set for the event’s 120 guests. Off the main house, there’s a chapel, a limonaia turned games room, a few assorted outbuildings: casitas—is that the word? This detail I’m maybe making up because I’m simply not rich enough to know.

Jesse Armstrong, the creator of Succession, an HBO series about a family of billionaires, seems mildly disgusted with himself for bringing his cast and crew to one of the world’s most beautiful countrysides; he has never wanted to fetishize the Roys’ wealth. Still, they would go somewhere stupid gorgeous for an opulent party, so here we are at the Villa Cetinale in Sovicille, a tiny town an hour south of Florence, as June inches toward July. With a tape recorder and a fistful of used Shiseido blotting papers—and sworn by an HBO blood oath not to reveal any spoilers—I’m trailing them around Tuscany for two weeks as they film the final episodes of the long-delayed third season. We’re in Siena for the first half, driving the 30 minutes from the city to Sovicille. The following week, we’ll travel throughout the Val d’Orcia region, with shoots in Pienza and Cortona. (You quickly realize you’re taking long car rides from one tiny town with great cheese to another.)