Dynasty: The Murdochs (2026) s01e01 Episode Script

[dramatic string music playing]
[man 1] The Murdoch succession battle
has been like a soap opera
that's been going on
for, honestly, decades.
[reporter 1] Bombshell news
that the Murdochs have settled.
[reporter 2] The long-running saga
has reached a resolution.
[man 2] It was about more than money.
It was about power and Daddy's love.
[reporter 3] Rupert!
[man 2] Rupert got everything he wanted.
[music pauses]
And it ripped his family apart.
- [horns beeping]
- [music resumes]
[woman 1] Family dynasties are
incredibly hard to maintain.
They tend to follow a traditional pattern,
where you have a founder,
then in the second generation,
the real success,
and in the third generation,
things sort of fall apart.
[man 1] These families have
an enormous amount of power.
[man 3] All this influence,
all this wealth.
[man 2] Flying in private jets
with incredible properties
all over the world.
[woman 1] You have the Waltons in the US,
who own Walmart.
- Do solemnly…
- Swear.
- [man 3] The Bushes.
- Please clap.
[man 1] The Fords.
[man 3] But of all these families,
far and away the most influential
is the Murdochs.
[enigmatic string music playing]
[man 4] Rupert Murdoch is
a one-of-a-kind, brilliant businessperson.
But he's also a villain
for a lot of people.
[man 5] Shame on you!
[man 6] Murdoch's a… a proper danger
to liberal democracies.
I'm not making any comments.
If liberal democracy is your thing.
[Rupert Murdoch] Our company is
a reflection of my thinking,
my character, and my values.
[exhaling deeply]
[woman 2] Like most rich people,
Rupert thinks
he's gonna live beyond the grave,
so he feels like
he has to have control over his legacy,
or it's the end of the empire.
[Rupert] It's every father's
natural desire
to see his children follow him,
if they're up to it.
[man 2] For Rupert, there was the family,
and there was the business,
and they were never separate.
[man 3] But this is part of the game that
Rupert Murdoch has played with his family.
[man 7] Tell us
the best thing about your dad.
See…
[man 1] What's at stake here
is billions of dollars.
[man 2] And the most influential
media property that's ever existed.
So it's like a family squabble…
[scoffs] …like, on steroids
that has a huge effect
on our politics and our lives.
[music continues]
[music ends]
[man 1] I hate to do this,
but to explain the Murdochs,
you have to understand
the television show Succession on HBO.
It's about a dynastic media family
strikingly like the Murdochs.
There's a patriarch
who's very much modeled on Rupert Murdoch,
and just like the Murdoch kids,
there are four children,
each with their own little camp.
And of course,
the Murdoch children love the show,
except for James,
who claims not to watch it.
Apparently Dad's sick.
Uh, what do you mean he's sick?
[Jim] So, in the last season in 2023,
the Rupert character suddenly dies.
Don't go, please. Not now.
[Jim] The family goes into a tailspin.
- They are not ready.
- I'm welling up.
[Jim] Succession isn't settled.
The stock price is crashing.
My father, Logan Roy, was pronounced dead…
[man 2] No one has any idea what to do.
Who's gonna speak at the funeral?
Who's gonna take over the company?
It's a mess.
Elisabeth's representative, Mark Devereux,
is watching the show,
and Mark finds himself in a panic.
"Oh my God. That could happen to us.
We haven't thought about any of this."
It's good to see you.
[Jonathan] It's important to understand,
though Rupert is well into his nineties,
he hates talking about his mortality.
There's this kind of mythology
within Rupert Murdoch's companies
that he's never gonna die.
That he's immortal.
There's been no discussion
of memorials, of burial.
You… you… you just can't go there
with Rupert.
So Mark calls Liz and says,
"Oh my God, have you seen this episode?"
And she's already seen it twice.
[chuckles softly]
And she also panics.
"You have to do something."
So Mark Devereux starts to write
what will become the Succession Memo.
It lays out, "Here are the things
you have to start thinking about."
"What is gonna happen when Rupert dies?"
[Jonathan] Who will speak at the funeral?
What will happen with the companies?
And this memo
is circulated among the children.
And the idea is that they are going
to begin this conversation,
if not with their father, then at least
on the margins around their father.
[Jim] Liz says,
"This has to be sorted out now."
"The future of the family depends on it."
[man 3] Since they were kids,
the Murdochs had been raised
with this idea
that their father built this media empire
in a kind of swashbuckling,
risk it all, gonzo manner
that, uh, Rupert is really proud of.
[man 4] This is a theme
that runs all through Rupert's career.
It's the outsider,
it's the underdog, taking on the elite.
And that was established early on
when he first arrived in London in 1969.
[man 5] When Rupert arrived in Britain,
no one took him very seriously.
Which is the mistake everyone's made
about Murdoch to this point.
[man 6] As a young man in Australia,
he had acquired
a number of Australian newspapers
and had just married
his second wife, Anna Torv Murdoch.
[reporter 1] Anna was a reporter
on one of his Australian newspapers.
She is quite capable
of coping with the tricky job
of being wife to an ambitious man.
I think that
being the wife of a tycoon must be
awful, really.
Well, first of all,
I don't like him being called a tycoon.
And secondly, it is awful sometimes
and it is lonely,
and you are cut out of it.
But I don't think I'd change it
for anything at all.
I think newspapers are in his blood.
He's fascinated by them.
By the presses rolling.
Seeing it on the street.
Watching what other people read.
He catches the tube in the morning,
and he doesn't take the papers.
He has read them all here.
And he sits in a little corner
and watches the dolly birds in London
with their miniskirts… [chuckles]
…and what they're reading.
He's like a good Australian businessman,
who's come here,
"I'm going to show you how to do it."
[camera clicks]
[David] Murdoch decides
that the British Establishment
needs to be shaken up and disrupted.
So he buys a fading
left-of-center British tabloid
called the News of the World.
[reporter 1] Murdoch took over
the News of the World in January.
Since then, its circulation has risen
by more than half a million.
[reporter 2] Critics claim it has lowered
the standards of Fleet Street.
[reporter 3] The demon king of journalism.
Rupert Murdoch.
Rupert in Britain is called
"the dirty digger."
The British Establishment sees him
as playing to the basest interests
and appetites of the British public.
People said,
"He's destroying British newspapers."
But actually he wasn't.
He was making them fun,
and people responded to that.
[Rupert] I'm not ashamed
of any of my newspapers at all.
And I'm rather sick of snobs
who tell us that they're bad papers.
Snobs who, um, only read papers
that no one else wants.
[reporter 1] Murdoch's London home
is in a fashionable square near Hyde Park.
Anna has settled down somewhat uneasily
to English life
with her one-year-old daughter.
Anna provides Rupert with a lovely family.
Elisabeth, named after Rupert's mother,
is born first.
Lachlan and James arrive,
each in sequence, a couple of years later.
And with Prudence, who is the product
of his first marriage in Australia,
the Murdochs become prominent figures.
Prominent enough that they're targeted.
[reporter 1] A recent profile said
that you belong to the brash,
masculine Australian tradition.
Is that how you see yourself?
Brash? I don't know.
Judge for yourself. Um…
[Paddy] He got a lot of publicity,
and he does an interview
which then is seen by two men,
the Hosein brothers.
[suspenseful music playing]
It shows Rupert's Rolls-Royce turning up
at the offices of the News of the World,
and the Hosein brothers go,
"That guy's rich,"
and they come up with a plan
to kidnap his wife.
One day, they follow the Rolls-Royce.
[David] But they don't know that
the Murdochs have loaned their Rolls-Royce
to the family
of one of Murdoch's executives.
And the executive's wife, Muriel McKay,
is kidnapped instead.
So the Hosein brothers are in a bind.
They've kidnapped the wrong person.
They don't know what to do with her.
[reporter 4] More than 100 policemen
will begin an even more intense search
of the farm buildings
and surrounding fields.
[David] The brothers were ultimately
apprehended by police,
but the body of Muriel McKay
was never found.
[Paddy] And for the Murdochs,
it was also traumatic
because they knew that the attempt
had been on Anna Murdoch's life.
[interviewer 1]
You were the intended target.
- Yes. Mm-hm.
- [interviewer 1] That must be a nightmare.
It wasn't so bad for us
as it was for Alick McKay.
Uh, but certainly
one has to think about it.
And it colored my time there in Britain
after that happened.
[David] It shakes their sense that Britain
is a safe place for them to be.
She worries about her own safety,
but she really worries about her children.
- [interviewer 1] Was that why you left?
- Um, partly.
[tense music playing]
[Paddy] The details are very sketchy,
but one night,
Anna Murdoch is driving her own car,
and there was an elderly woman
trying to cross the road,
and she hit the woman and killed her.
[tense music continues]
[siren wailing]
No media did publish the details.
I mean, this terrible accident
happened 50 years ago,
and we still don't know
very much about it.
This is a terrible tragedy,
and it shakes Anna to her core.
[Paddy] First, there had been
the attempt on her life.
And the accident is the last straw.
Anna Murdoch is desperate
to leave England behind her.
[music ends]
[interviewer 1] You went to America
with the family?
[Anna] Yes,
I took my children to New York.
[Paddy] The Murdochs
moved to a fabulous apartment
just across the road from Central Park.
[McKay] It was this penthouse apartment
that had a private elevator,
and a butler named George
who catered to every whim.
Anything that they could ever want or need
was given to them.
[woman 1] I suppose we lived
a very privileged lifestyle
comparative to some of the people
that we grew up with,
but we didn't think of ourselves
as special at all.
The kids were afforded
every luxury imaginable.
They had the best educations.
They went to the best schools.
So they were all a part of this ecosystem
of the most wealthy
and powerful people in the city.
Tell us about your father a little bit.
Tell us the best thing about your dad.
- The best thing?
- [man 7] Yes.
Um…
Let's see.
Um…
Well, he always likes
to go camping with us.
And we'll go…
Actually, we're going camping
after the Olympics for a week.
[man 7] Does he spend a lot of time
with you?
Yes.
[McKay] When James and Lachlan
were really young,
they were treated almost like twins.
They were only born 15 months apart,
and as little boys,
they were almost inseparable.
They liked to play knights together
and build forts
and, you know,
get into little-boy trouble together.
When they argued, Rupert almost welcomed
the competition between his children.
He never stepped in to stop it.
He just let them fight.
[interviewer 2] When you were growing up,
was there a pecking order in the family?
No, I used to beat them up a lot,
but… [chuckles]
Um, but we were always
a very, very close family.
[McKay] For the Murdochs,
family life was organized
around Rupert's professional world,
where he was king of the castle.
[man 8] From a very early age,
seven years old and eight years old,
we began to understand
that we were part of the media business.
Liz, James, and I would come for breakfast
before we had to get the bus to school,
and all the papers would come out.
And as we read the papers, my dad
would be handing out stories to us.
He'd say, "Read that."
Or, "That's a shocking headline."
[McKay] All of the kids
wanted Rupert's attention,
and there was a finite amount of it
to go around,
so invariably, the kids
ended up competing for it.
[Elisabeth] We knew that you had to be
part of that world in some ways
if you were going to be engaged with him.
[phone ringing]
[McKay] James told me this story
about how his dad was always so distracted
and would often not respond to James
when he was talking.
James once asked his mom,
"Is Daddy going deaf?"
"No, he's just not listening."
[woman 2] Rupert is always moving,
and like a shark,
you die if you stop moving.
He asks himself,
"What do my competitors know?"
"What do I know that they don't know?"
Three blocks, you make a left.
You follow that down and…
[woman 3] What Rupert liked about America
was it wasn't old.
It wasn't stuck in the past.
He saw a huge landscape he could paint on.
And that's exciting for an entrepreneur.
He could do whatever he wanted.
[man 9] Murdoch bought the New York Post
in 1976,
and on the very first day
that Rupert took over the paper,
door bursts open
at 6:00 a.m. in the morning,
and he just walks in.
There's things he wants changed.
[Jim] What Murdoch wants to do
is to win over the white working class
who are reading the Daily News.
He's gonna draw them to the New York Post.
And in 1977, he got his chance.
- [electricity crackles]
- [people groaning]
[reporter 5] We bring you the following
NBC News Special Report.
Darkness takes the city.
[helicopter whirring]
The New York City area
and its ten million people
were blacked out.
And tonight, large parts of the city
still are without power.
[siren wailing]
[Dick] There was looting, there was crime,
and people felt that New York
was just out of control.
[Jim] The big columnists at all the papers
were out in the streets,
and many reporters were liberal
in their views about these things.
[people clamoring]
And they are writing about
how the blackout has brought
inequality in the city to the surface.
So Rupert brings in his favorite
correspondent, Steve Dunleavy,
and Dunleavy knows
the story that Rupert wants.
He sees it through the eyes of the cops.
"I'll go to the poor neighborhood, write
about the breakdown in law and order."
[tense music playing]
Playing to the white-flight crowd.
[music ends]
And it works. It sells papers.
So Rupert says,
"That's what my newspaper's gonna be."
[seller 1] Get your Post here.
New York Post here. Only a quarter.
[Jim] He's building a new constituency.
White, working-class readers.
But with a populist, right-leaning slant.
[woman 4] Pre-Murdoch, the Post was
a blue-collar but educated readership.
I don't know what comes after blue collar,
but whatever the color of the collar is,
that's… [laughs]
…that's where Rupert Murdoch took it.
If you don't do what I want, then
it's gonna be your fault, not my fault,
if it doesn't work.
Rupert was making the New York Post
like his British tabloids
with lots of sex,
lots of crime, sensationalist headlines.
[Dick] "Headless body in topless bar."
That's still legendary.
[man 10] He is doing a very good job,
a superb job,
and, uh, all his publications
are more interesting than they have been.
[Dick] The Post went from
400,000 circulation to a million.
And we went from being
this quiet little paper
to being this paper
that became controversial.
[seller 2] Read all about it.
Get your Post.
And everybody either loved us or hated us.
You run a sleazy newspaper.
Not true.
[Paddy] Rupert became a villain
for a lot of people.
- [man 11] Rupert Murdoch.
- [woman 5] Controversial publisher.
[man 12] The tabloids
have given Murdoch his reputation.
[man 13] …sensational newspapers
in the world.
But that disdain that sort of
polite society had for Rupert Murdoch
actually helped bring the kids together
and bring the family together.
This is my son James.
[man 7] Are you
in the newspaper business too?
- I wanna be.
- [man 7] Do you?
- Yeah.
- Tell us about your dad.
We know him through the papers.
How would you describe your dad?
Um…
Well, different from
what the newspapers say and the TV shows.
Well, I think the, um, the papers
and the shows about him and stuff
make him look a little, like,
too mean and dark and sinister.
And really, he's a really nice person.
A fun person.
- Sometimes, eh?
- Yeah.
When you behave.
[quirky music playing]
[Lachlan] I remember
one cover of Time magazine,
uh, that had my father as King Kong
on top of the World Trade Center
with, you know,
little biplanes trying to shoot him down.
And that was the first memory that I have
that, well, you know,
the other dads at school,
uh, weren't on the cover of Time magazine,
portrayed as this monster.
[Sarah] All these kids were very aware
of the disapproval that many New Yorkers
had for their father.
And so it was something
that forged their identity.
I mean, Liz told me that if you see people
constantly attacking your father,
you wanna band together.
And that's what they did.
At least for a while.
It's always been the kids' destiny.
They're going to run the company.
They're told that from a very early age.
"One day, one of you
will be running the Murdoch empire."
They don't know who.
They know they're gonna have to compete.
[dynamic music playing]
[David] This is part of the game that
Rupert Murdoch has played with his family.
[Paul] It's gonna be a long battle.
They're gonna have to prove themselves.
[Paddy] And so, as competitors
for Rupert's affections,
and ultimately for the succession…
[music intensifies, ends]
…all the kids
have played a different game.
[camera clicks]
[David] First and foremost,
we have Prudence.
[McKay] Prue was from a previous marriage,
had a different mother.
So that made her feel
like a little more of an outsider.
[David] Prudence, relatively early on,
decides she doesn't wanna be
a major player in this.
[woman 6] You know, it's a big buzz
being around Dad.
You know, it's very exciting what he does.
And I'm sure,
if I'd been around him longer,
I may well have wanted to do that.
But I always wanted to be independent.
[David] Next up is Elisabeth.
[interviewer 2] He has said
that, of his children,
you're the one who's most like him.
[Elisabeth chuckles softly]
Really? Um…
Possibly.
I don't quite know what that means,
to be most like my old man.
[Sarah] Elisabeth is the oldest child
in his marriage to Anna Murdoch.
She is shrewd and ambitious
in her own way.
[McKay] She has her dad's creative streak
in a way that her brothers don't.
[Paul] So she's sent to be a researcher
on a pretty crappy
little current affairs program in Sydney,
which is kind of the lowest of the low
in that position.
She serves a couple of years doing that.
Then she persuades Rupert to lend her
some money to buy a couple of TV stations.
[interviewer 3] Who are you most like
of your mother and father?
Who am I… Oh boy. I don't know.
Um, I think, hopefully,
I'm a mixture of both.
Um…
Hopefully, I've got my mother's looks.
[chuckles]
Lachlan has always been the dutiful son.
[camera clicks]
[McKay] He's kind of the mini Rupert.
Self-consciously emulative of his dad.
[Paddy] Lachlan did an apprenticeship
at The Times and The Sun in London.
[Lachlan] I was cleaning out inkwells.
But, having said that,
I understand the basics of printing
a lot better
than a lot of executives around the place.
And then I went to university.
[Sarah] Lachlan went to Princeton
and was pretty low key.
[Paddy] His main passion
was actually not academic at all.
It was rock climbing.
He was climbing eight hours a day,
and he was good at it.
[Lachlan] I studied philosophy
and, specifically, sort of ethics.
But I wasn't a great student. I tended
to leave everything to the last minute.
[interviewer 3] The journalist in you,
perhaps.
Absolutely. That's right.
Pushing deadlines whenever I can. [laughs]
[McKay] James is more of an introvert.
He's very bright, very articulate,
but he was always seen
as kind of the problem son.
[David] He had famously done an internship
at an Australian newspaper
and been photographed asleep on a couch,
as though he was bored with
the news meeting he was sitting in on.
As it turned out, he had been up all night
on an assignment and was exhausted.
[McKay] He just had this rebellious streak
that was always manifesting
in different ways.
For example, he somewhat infamously
dropped out of school for a while
to follow the Grateful Dead on tour.
That was something that was used
to sort of mock and ridicule him.
And Lachlan was dutifully
kind of taking the measure
of his younger brother's missteps.
[intriguing music playing]
[reporter 6] If there's any such thing
as the New York Establishment, here it is.
From the wonderful worlds of
politics, commerce, labor, and industry.
Their guest on this occasion,
Rupert Murdoch.
[Rupert] Ladies and gentlemen,
I appreciate your invitation to appear
before such a distinguished group.
[Sarah] By the 1980s,
Rupert's pretty triumphant.
He's got this wonderfully influential
right-wing tabloid
at a time when the city is ripe for it.
[Rupert] The role of a newspaper
should be to provoke debate.
No apologies for anything.
[Paddy] The Murdoch empire is sprawling,
with assets in the US, UK, and Australia.
Here it is, folks. Post here.
[Sarah] Rupert wants to have real power,
and he recognizes that that kind of power
comes not just through news
but through shaping politics.
[Jim] He's got a giant goal in mind.
And he can only get it
with the help of powerful politicians.
[Sarah] So he starts making friends with
the biggest names in New York society.
[Claire] Rupert and Donald Trump
are in the same ecosystem.
[crowd chattering]
[crowd cheering, whistling]
[Claire] And Roy Cohn is there.
Roy Cohn is the famous advisor
of Donald Trump,
who gives him the playbook
of how the media works
and how to be the person he is today.
[Roy] I would do anything
that is legally permissible
to get my client to win.
[Claire] Cohn tells Rupert
about backroom deals
and who's in power and who's not.
[Jim] Cohn gets him in touch
with Roger Stone.
They're the New York Republicans
behind Reagan.
We will make America great again.
- [crowd cheering]
- Thank you very much.
[cheering and whistling]
[Paddy] Rupert is keen to turn
the political influence that he has
as a media proprietor
into commercial advantage.
[Jim] So he gets behind a politician
in a way that the New York Post
hadn't ever really done.
[man 14] Are you prepared
to take the constitutional oath?
I am.
[man 14] Place your left hand
on the Bible, and raise your right hand…
[Jim] There's a lot Rupert needs,
and he can only get it from
a friendly presidential administration.
[tense music playing]
What Rupert wants to do is unheard of.
At the time, a brazen idea.
He wants to start
a fourth television network.
This was a time when you can't imagine it
because today,
there's so much media everywhere,
but at that time,
there was only the three networks.
[NBC chimes playing]
[announcer 1] This is CBS.
[announcer 2] This is ABC.
History and logic say
a fourth broadcast network is a long shot.
But Rupert Murdoch
doesn't always play the percentages.
If we pull it off,
it'll be a real feather in our cap.
[Jim] Regulations made it hard
for someone like Rupert Murdoch
to waltz in and say,
"I'm gonna start a network."
For instance, you couldn't have
a television station and a newspaper
in the same city.
You couldn't have more than X number
of stations in the whole country.
So who's gonna help Rupert
pull this thing off?
[camera clicks]
[David] The Reagan administration
essentially gave Rupert Murdoch,
let's call it an easement.
[Sarah] He's able to get a waiver
so that he can own both a paper and
a television station in the same market.
And then he had to become an American
citizen to own a broadcast network.
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch
today renounced his Australian citizenship
to become an American.
[David] He goes in a back door
in a New York City federal courthouse
and emerges the same day
with his citizenship in hand.
That's what happens
when you help Ronald Reagan get elected.
[reporter 7] Would you stop
and maybe give us three or four questions?
I've got nothing to hide at all.
[Jim] You'll see this time and time again
in his career.
It's always about
picking the right politician
to get the regulation out of his way
for the next conquest.
[Paddy] Rupert is learning
how to use power.
And, boom, the Fox network was born.
[Fox network fanfare playing]
- [whooshing]
- This is the year, the year for… ♪
[all] Fox.
- Make no mistake about it ♪
- Fox!
[announcer 3]
Fox wants to become an alternative
for viewers bored
with standard network fare.
The three networks did the same thing.
They offered the same hot dog.
Isn't he cute? I call him Scottie.
And these guys were like,
"Time for hamburgers."
[groans weakly]
[Matthew] Rupert hit it out of the park
with Fox network.
[both] Welcome to Men on Films.
Oh, there was nothing like it.
- Ow!
- Ha ha!
[Kara] The comedy shows
had the snarkiness and attitude.
Why don't you take a picture of me so
you can remember me when I was beautiful?
What, are you gonna get worse?
Shows played to the interests that might
appeal to a tabloid newspaper viewer.
Shut up and take the picture.
- [camera clicks]
- [cheering]
[Kara] He took from the New York Post
this populist tendency
and put it on steroids.
Eat my shorts, lame-os.
[Matthew] Fox, under Rupert Murdoch,
created a market
for television that did not exist.
[Rupert] Seems to have made us
popular with the viewers
and very unpopular with our competitors.
Uh, and that's a pretty good place to be.
- [Jim] Rupert shook things up.
- [Paddy] He put the whole empire at risk.
[David] And the public
rewarded him for it.
[McKay] With his success in film and TV,
Rupert and Anna moved to Los Angeles
to run these companies.
Meanwhile, James was enrolled
in an elite prep school in Manhattan,
and so he stayed behind
for basically all of his teenage years,
living alone in this penthouse
with butler George…
[quirky music playing]
…just kind of doing whatever he wanted.
And he and his best friend were allowed
to run wild in this penthouse.
They would have people over
and got into a lot of trouble.
But I think, even then,
James knew that he would be forced to work
for the family business one day.
[music ends]
I guess you all know
that the newspaper business can be
a funny business.
To my next guest,
it happens to be a family business.
She's the wife of probably
the richest and most controversial,
also maybe the most influential,
media mogul in the world.
Please welcome Anna Murdoch.
- [lively music playing]
- [applause]
[music ends]
- Nice to see you again.
- It's nice to be with you.
Now, listen, the book is Family Business.
Why would Anna Murdoch write a book
about an international media mogul?
[Anna laughs]
That's a not very obvious question.
[soft piano music playing]
[Kara] Anna famously wrote a novel
called Family Business
that sort of closely mirrored
some of the facts of the Murdoch family.
In this novel, the Rupert Murdoch
character is actually a woman
who, like Rupert…
is incredibly passionate about newspapers
and knows every detail of the process.
And she has three kids
that have all got claims to the business.
And it shows how the succession
could end in tears.
[Anna] I wanted to show
the breakup within the family,
that I think power and money
can actually affect sibling relationships.
You have all these little fiefdoms
and people arguing among themselves.
[Jim] I think Anna was almost
a Cassandra figure in all of this.
[Sarah] She was very prescient in knowing
that this kind of inheritance
was gonna become a problem.
[Paddy] And I think she was
kind of advising Rupert in this novel
that no good would come of it.
[interviewer 2] How important is it
for News Corporation to stay in,
uh, in family hands?
To whom?
"How important to whom?" is the question.
[McKay] The thing about men like Rupert
is that they say that they're doing
everything for their family
and they're building this family empire,
but at the end of the day, the empire
always takes precedent over the family.
[tense music playing]
[Sarah] He says,
"I want one of my children to succeed me."
But he doesn't say
how they should succeed him,
what exactly they need to do
in order to get that brass ring.
And it sets up exactly the dynamic
that Anna didn't want.
This sort of rivalry among the kids.
It's like Hunger Games, Murdoch style.
[music crescendos, ends]
[Elisabeth] From the time
that we were very small,
this is one of the other lessons
Dad taught me,
it has been very clear
that you have to control your own destiny.
[intriguing music playing]
[Paul] Elisabeth is running
her own TV stations in America.
She makes some decisions
people don't like.
[Sarah] Elisabeth takes a page
out of her father's playbook.
[Paul] She sacks people
that have been around a long time.
She pisses quite a few people off,
but she makes a success
of those TV stations
and sells them at a great profit.
Rupert respects that and really sees her
as a capable executive.
[McKay] She's maybe even
a worthy protégée.
[Paul] She says she's gonna do an MBA.
Rupert says, "What do you mean,
do an MBA? Come and work for me."
"You'll learn much more."
She goes and works
with her father in Britain.
[Lachlan] My father's remarkable,
what he's achieved.
And I'll work as hard as I can
to do as much as I can,
and, uh,
I'll take one challenge at a time.
[Paddy] Lachlan moves to Brisbane
and becomes junior manager
at Rupert's paper The Courier Mail.
Lachlan is elevated incredibly quickly
to positions of power.
He's running the Queensland newspapers
at the age of 22 years old.
[Paddy] He's young.
He's good looking. He's fabulously rich.
Arguably, he's the most eligible bachelor
in the country.
[reporter 8] With him,
his heir apparent, son Lachlan.
Lachlan Murdoch has made
a faster rise to the top than Tiger Woods.
Has your dad had this conversation
with you? "You'll run this company."
No, no. He, uh… My father's focused on,
you know, the day to day.
[Paul] By the mid '90s,
he has essentially been handed
the whole of the Australian empire.
[Sarah] And though Rupert officially says
that any of the kids could succeed him,
it seems like Lachlan is his favorite.
[interviewer 4] Is there an acceptance
that your older brother, Lachlan,
will take over eventually?
Um, I don't think that's really…
That's not an issue
that I concern myself with.
- Other people concern themselves with it.
- That's their business.
[steady drumbeat playing]
[Paul] James decides that he doesn't
want to be part of the company,
that he wants to make his own way.
[David] James drops out of Harvard,
and he goes out
and he founds Rawkus Records,
seeking to show that he has
a sensibility for a new generation.
[Jim] James is trying desperately
to prove himself as an outsider.
His father probably didn't even know
what hip-hop was.
[Kara] You know,
he was like the hip Murdoch.
[camera clicks]
He wore an earring so we knew he was cool.
[wistful music playing]
- [reporter shouts]
- [camera clicks]
All these kids know they have to shine
and impress their father.
[McKay] But it's clear that he's not
just going to give up this empire.
[David] There was more to do.
Another chapter to write.
[Rupert] I wanna stay what I'm doing
as long as I'm physically fit.
I don't think my children are ready yet.
They may not agree with that,
but I'm certainly planning
to make them wait several more years.
[wistful music continues]
[woman 7] Good morning, everyone.
I'm Allison Costarene.
[man 15] And I'm Louis Aguirre.
Topping our news this morning…
[news continues on TV]
That's great. Congratulations.
When do you think they'll get back to you?
[Sarah] By the late '90s,
Rupert Murdoch has enjoyed
an enormous amount of success in the US.
He has 20th Century Fox.
Movie studios, television.
He is a legitimate mogul,
and he has the ear of politicians.
- [woman 8] Hello, Mr. Murdoch.
- Hello again. How are you?
He is at the top of his game.
[Jim] Rupert is in his late sixties,
and Anna has been waiting for years now
for Rupert to retire,
to start their own life together.
Anna had been suggesting
that Murdoch step back from the company
and prepare one of their children
to succeed him.
He didn't wanna do that at all.
He was just getting started.
[horn blares]
He's getting a little antsy and decides
to check out his Asia operations.
[Sarah] While he is traveling
on a tour through China,
Rupert meets a young woman
named Wendi Deng.
[intriguing music playing]
She had a junior role at his company.
[David] Suddenly, Rupert is unavailable.
You know, he says that he was
scouting properties or traveling.
Eventually, people on his staff
start noticing that he's showing up
with Wendi Deng here and there.
It's clear pretty quickly
that a friendship is blooming.
Anna will say outright later
that it was an affair.
Rupert will deny it's an affair.
[David] He came back from Asia
and set up a board meeting
where he rather abruptly announced
that he was going to divorce
his second wife, Anna Torv Murdoch,
and that she was gonna be relinquishing
her spot on the company board.
Not long afterwards, he was telling
his children he'd met a nice Chinese lady.
[Prudence] He rang me and said,
"Oh, by the way, I've met this lady."
I couldn't believe it, actually.
I just thought, "You dirty old man."
[Sarah] Both Lachlan and James tried
to convince Rupert not to be with Wendi.
They are just aghast that Rupert
would betray their mother in this way.
This is a great shock
to the rest of the family,
and this was deeply humiliating for Anna.
The wife of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch
filed for divorce in California today.
The divorce papers show
that Mrs. Anna Murdoch
doesn't know how much her husband's
business interests are worth.
But she means to find out.
[reporter 9] Their divorce
exposes the assets
of one of the world's richest men.
[reporter 10] News Corporation's
share price dropped 27 cents.
Of concern, the impact
the separation could have
on the future ownership of the company.
[reporter 11] The stage may be set
for the biggest divorce settlement ever.
- [reporters clamoring]
- [cameras clicking]
[Jim] Because the divorce
is filed in California,
Anna will be entitled
to half of all the wealth Murdoch built
over the course
of their 30 years together.
[intriguing music continues]
But throughout
the whole building of the empire
and the raising of the kids,
she has been focused on one thing
far more than money.
And that's how this succession battle
is gonna play out between the children.
[McKay] She saw the way that
Rupert pitted them against each other,
and she didn't want that to become
the defining aspect of their lives.
[Sarah] So she decides to use her power
to secure her children's control
over the company going forward.
And that's when she negotiates
to set up the Murdoch Family Trust.
[David] Instead of going for
half of his assets,
which she might have been entitled to,
she took only, I'll use that in quotes,
only $110 million
and created a trust
where all of the children will,
in tandem together,
decide the fate of the family business.
[Sarah] The trust gives Rupert four votes,
and his children, Elisabeth,
James, Lachlan, and Prudence,
one vote each until Rupert dies,
and then the four of them
will have equal control over the company
in the future.
Having equal control among four siblings
is not a great idea.
They could deadlock,
and that could make it impossible
for the company to make decisions.
But I think he just trusts that it's fine,
"I'll deal with it later.
I'll kick this can down the road."
[Jim] Until that moment, Rupert Murdoch
has full control of his destiny.
He controls the companies.
He will choose his successor.
But Rupert is eager, perhaps overeager,
to move on with the next chapter.
And in pursuit of a second life
and much younger wife,
he gives up control of his empire.
It's a fateful decision that will change
the entire dynamic in the Murdoch family.
[Paddy] This is the moment.
[Jim] The beginning of a battle
that would define the family for decades.
- [horn blares]
- [music ends]
[intriguing instrumental music playing]