Brian Cox may have more in common with Logan Roy than one would expect. In a recent interview pegged to his new book, which has made headlines for its frank takes on other actors and filmmakers he’s encountered in his decades-long career (Johnny Depp is “so overrated;” Spike Lee is “one of the best directors”), Cox pondered his similarities to the vicious patriarch at the center of the hit HBO show Succession.
“I mean, the similarity between me and Logan Roy is that we do share the disappointment in the human experiment,” he said, before referring to the Trump Era as an example of his own disappointment. But, he added, Logan “really thinks that we’re doomed, whereas I feel the opposite.”
Yet, the most surprising similarity might be in his fatherly tone in speaking on his co-star Jeremy Strong — though he adopted a decidedly more tender direction than his Roy persona would take. On the juicy profile of Strong, who plays Logan’s son Kendall, in The New Yorker last month that set the internet ablaze over its details on Strong’s extreme methods as an actor, Cox said, “It was Jeremy’s idea, the whole article. He pushed for it, and you know, and people kept warning him about it. In a sense, he got hoisted by it, and I think it was unfortunate. I think he should never had gone down that road because playing Kendall has put him in a very vulnerable position.”
The revelation could be seen as confirmation of some theories online that the strong reaction to Strong’s profile (he apparently could not comprehend his own show as a comedy and in practicing a method he calls “identity diffusion” appeared to irritate his own cast mates) was in fact all part of his method acting-esque plan to deliberately stir up the internet, as it would mirror the energy of his character from this season and serve his process.
“[H]e does what he does and he does it brilliantly, but it’s also exhausting,” Cox noted about Strong. “Particularly exhausting for him, but it’s also exhausting for the rest of us from time to time. But we weather it because we love him and because the result is always extraordinary, what he does, but at the same time, there is the double-edged sword that goes with it.”
Yet Cox sounded ultimately genuinely worried about Strong’s well-being in deploying his process in such a demanding and high-profile role. “I think he lives in a lot of pain,” Cox said. “I mean, he creates the pain in the role he plays. That doesn’t necessarily help, but he does. …. There is a certain amount of pain at the root of Jeremy, and I just feel for that pain.”
As for Cox himself, he couldn’t help but throw in a lightly Logan-esque jab when asked whether he would ever find himself in a similarly “vulnerable position” that the New Yorker profile inflicted upon Strong. “Listen,” he said, “I’m too old, too tired and too talented for any of that shit.”
