Jeremy Strong’s method acting approach to portraying “Succession’s” deeply tragic Kendall Roy is not news — and it’s something co-star Brian Cox, who plays the gruff and withholding patriarch Logan Roy, finds “f—ing annoying.”
The Emmy-winning Scottish actor has previously expressed his indifference to Strong’s immersive technique, having called the method a uniquely “American disease” in the much-discussed 2021 New Yorker profile of the star. Now, in a cover story with Town & Country, the veteran actor — who is classically trained — doubled down on his sentiments.
“He’s a very good actor,” Cox told the magazine. “And the rest of the ensemble is all OK with this. But knowing a character and what the character does is only part of the skill set.” When asked if he finds Strong’s approach annoying, Cox responded, “Oh, it’s f–ing annoying. Don’t get me going on it.”
Cox continued, bringing up an example of how he successfully taught a toddler the seminal “To be or not to be” soliloquy in “Hamlet,” saying that the approach was just exemplary of simple instruction: “There is something in the little boy that is able to convey the character. It’s just there and is accessible. It’s not a big f—ing religious experience.”
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For example, Cox said he was taken aback when Strong didn’t break character after filming a particularly heavy scene in the final episode of the HBO show’s third season, where Kendall confesses to accidentally killing the caterer from Shiv’s (Sarah Snook) wedding: “He’s still that guy, because he feels if he went somewhere else he’d lose it. But he won’t! Strong is talented. He’s f–ing gifted. When you’ve got the gift, celebrate the gift. Go back to your trailer and have a hit of marijuana, you know?”
Strong, for his part, said in a recent GQ profile, “Everyone’s entitled to have their feelings. I also think Brian Cox, for example, he’s earned the right to say whatever the f–k he wants. There was no need to address that or do damage control … I feel a lot of love for my siblings and my father on the show. And it is like a family in the sense that, and I’m sure they would say this, too, you don’t always like the people that you love. I do always respect them.”
The Emmy winner and “Armageddon Time” star also addressed Cox’s previous comments, made in a Deadline Q&A last year, that “there is a certain amount of pain at the root” of him and that Cox feels for that pain: “You know, I don’t think so,” Strong told GQ. “I don’t think there is. There’s certainly a lot of pain in Kendall, and I haven’t really met Brian outside of the confines of that.”
