Alan Pergament: Ashley Rowe's next anchor role is Sunday on HBO's 'Succession'

I can’t give away any spoilers after watching a preview of Sunday’s intense eighth episode of the season premiering at 10 p.m. other than to say Rowe appears as a fictional ATN co-anchor, Tracy Levings, briefly four or five times in the episode covering a bizarre presidential election night.

She also appears in the weekly opening credits with her co-anchor, although that footage is blurry and goes by so fast that few people would recognize her.

“My husband certainly did,” said Rowe in a telephone interview. “It was pretty funny when I first started watching season four and I saw my face in the title credits. I was like, ‘Whoa, this is weird.’ ”

She said Sunday’s episode was filmed over a couple of weeks last fall after she received a call from her agent asking if she could be in New York City to be part of it.

“It just sort of fell into my lap,” said Rowe. “I was in Vermont chasing kids around when I got a phone call from my agent.”

She wasn’t sure after filming how many of the scenes she shot would make the cut.

“I shot so much stuff under the expectation that I wouldn't see myself on camera,” said Rowe.

Told she is on four or five times, Rowe responded: “Oh, cool.”

She knows who won the presidency because she heard her fictional co-anchor read the line.

“I was joking when we were shooting that I thought, ‘Well obviously this scene is going to be used.’ This is the big scene but I didn't think anything else would be used.”

Rowe, who won’t be in the two remaining episodes of “Succession” after Sunday, is a big fan of the series about a media family modeled after Fox News executive chair Rupert Murdoch and his children.

“That's why I was so flabbergasted when I first got the phone call because it is by far my favorite show on television,” said Rowe. “I’m a massive fan."

She found the experience working with creator Jesse Armstrong a little unreal.

“Here's the guy that created my favorite TV show, giving me notes. It was just like surreal to me,” said Rowe.

What kind of notes did he give you?

“When we were doing the election coverage, obviously ATN anchors take a certain approach and so it was getting notes from them about how we should put the emphasis and the context of the scene and so have that in mind and that sort of thing. He's giving me notes on how to present the lines, more emphatic or less emphatic, just trying to get into the headspace of an ATN anchor.”

She laughed when asked if she could ever envision herself as a Fox News anchor.

“You're going to get me in trouble,” she said with a laugh. “I will not respond to that question. Let’s just say it was fun to get to play pretend in a landscape that is familiar to me. I don't know how else to put it politically correctly.”

As I asked Rowe if she thought she was cast as an anchor on a fictional network modeled after Fox News “because she was,” she completed the question for me.

“Blonde,” she said, laughing loudly.

“I’m so glad that I had the opportunity because it was so much fun and I made some great friends and I got to be in the company of people who I have admired for a long time, including some of the cast, which I was just like, gleeful about.

“I didn't actually talk with anyone beyond Nicholas Braun (Greg) briefly. But I got to be in the background while Matthew Macfadyen (Tom) and Sarah Snook (Shiv) and Kieran Culkin (Roman) were all on set. So I'm excited to see how the show turns out. I've only been able to see a small window of that episode.”

The next episode of her real TV career will be revealed soon.

She couldn’t answer where she will anchor next but confirmed it is going to be at a North Carolina station and she’ll be able to give more details in the coming weeks.