On Unlikeable Characters

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On Unlikeable Characters

A common note we screenwriters contend with is that our characters aren’t likeable enough. It drives us crazy. One might think that the previous thirty years of hits constructed, entirely by design, around patently unlikable characters — The Sopranos, Mad Men, It’s Always Sunny, Breaking Bad, and, of course, most recently Succession — that our readers could give us a break. After all, the “heroes” of these shows can be selfish, avaricious, misogynistic, grasping, and yet they are series that have found success clearly because not despite these characters.

And yet, even in the privacy of our own studies, we find it difficult to dismiss this note out of hand. We know, instinctively somehow, that our audiences need to be drawn to our characters, that they need to enjoy spending time with them, that they need — to adapt Raymond Chandler’s opinion about James Bond — to want to be them, or want to fuck them. Despite ourselves, we know that audiences, on some level, do need to like them.

Like all notes, the danger with this one is not so much in the note itself and more in the way we, as writers, react to it. The natural temptation is to make our characters nicer. Of course, our audiences will like this character if only they could be just a bit nicer! Or, to put it a different way, we are tempted to round off their edges, make them more ethical, more moral, to make them do the things that we’d like them to do and be the kind of person ideally they should be.

The reason that this is dangerous is that the fundamental thing that drives our stories is change. And if our characters are likeable, lovable, ethically right from the off, then their capacity for change is restricted. The whole point of drama is that, over the course of the story, it forces characters to do the right thing — or at least a right-er thing. If they are intrinsically likeable already, then where is the incentive to do better? What’s the point of the story? 

Perhaps, we may just need to change our view of what it means to be likeable.

Let’s take Succession’s Roman Roy (spoilers ahead): who is an excellent example of a deeply unlikeable character that we nevertheless like — if not love. Roman is greedy. He has a sulking child’s entitlement and privilege. He is (as his siblings take great delight in reminding him) sexually screwed up to the point of dysfunction. He’s also funny, which is helpful — though I’m not sure entirely why, as an audience, we care so much for him.

I think the thing that makes him loveable is that, despite all the things that Roman does: the bad behaviour, the treachery, (at one point he convinces his father to give the keys to the White House to a proto-fascist), there is something else at his core. 

At the end of the most recent series, we suddenly see everything Roman has done, all his snark and harm, for what they are — a shield, a protective shell. And, when his dissembling and camouflage erodes, what is left is a pretty direct and brazen appeal. He wants his father to love him. In the final scene where it is clear that Logan Roy is going to leave his children high and dry, Roman suddenly seems like a very scared child. 

And, of course, someone who is in love and will never be loved in return, is likeable to us, because they are us. It is not because that behaviour is good or right or even attractive, but because we recognise in this core behaviour something of ourselves. Roman is likeable because he is like us.

And this is despite he is a rich kid who will never have to work a day in his life, who thinks nothing of driving around on speed boats and who is sad because his is thinks he is losing his grip on a multi-billion pound empire. Despite the different social backgrounds and approaches to life that Succession’s characters show compared to most of its audience, it is because at their centre they provide a screen on which we can project ourselves.

All my best,

James.