It’s probably not fair to Nicholas Braun that our brains have him permanently filed in a very specific folder, with a label marked Greg, Cousin. And yet, it’s only because Braun’s take on flop-sweating, strangely sweet corporate scheming as Cousin Greg is one of the best parts of HBO’s Succession, taking the sting out of some of the show’s built-in big business nastiness by being so, well, terrible at it.
Which is why it’s weirdly fitting to see Braun line up his next big project: Starring as “So Shocked This Guy Turned Out To Be An Asshole” WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann in an upcoming TV series about the real-estate company’s founding and recent woes. Per Variety, the series is being based on an upcoming book from Wall Street Journal reporters Maureen Farrell and Eliot Brown, tracking how a company that somehow managed to embody every aspect of brainless start-up hubris—private jet rides, unlimited office beer, and, of course, a light smattering of alleged sexual harassment—could possibly go so wrong.
Braun feels like a perfect fit for Neumann, who stepped down from his role as the shared workspace firm’s CEO after its abortive attempt to launch an IPO earlier this year, as well as a recent WSJ profile from Farrell and Brown that painted him as—hmmm. Is “delusional, fame-chasing would-be megalomaniac” too harsh? Either way, we’ll certainly be happy to see Braun embody the confidence of a man who happily banned his employees from eating meat in the office one day, and then profited off selling the rights to the word “We” to his own company the next.
Braun’s show has yet to land a network. It’s the second WeWork project to go into production in recent months; Universal and Blumhouse are making a movie about the start-up, with The Big Short’s Charles Randolph set to write the script.