This week’s “Succession” hinged around a very big twist, one that we won’t give away here (yet) that impacted Brian Cox’s Logan Roy, the bellowing titan of industry and patriarch of the very dysfunctional Roy family.
Cox spoke about the episode and his role on the show, which is entering into its final episodes before the series finale next month. Find excerpts from his chat with The New York Times below.
Major spoilers for last night’s episode of “Succession” follow. Turn back if you haven’t watched yet (and, really, you should watch).
Cox said that he figured Logan was a goner, but didn’t expect him to exit this early in the season, recounting a call he had with creator Jesse Armstrong (who wrote last night’s episode). ““He called me, and he said, ‘Logan’s going to die,’” Cox explained to the New York Times. “And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s fine.’ I thought he would die in about Episode 7 or 8, but Episode 3, I thought … ‘Well that’s a bit early.’”
Still, Cox applauds the decision, especially given how many series drag on unnecessarily for extra seasons. “Well, they had to end it somehow, and it was Jesse’s choice. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the problem with a lot of television, particularly American television, is it goes past its sell-by date. And the great thing about Jesse and the writers is they wouldn’t do that. It was difficult for them because it wasn’t easy to bring this to an end,” Cox said. (HBO brass has been pretty open about wanting additional seasons too.) “I applaud the fact that he did that. It was courageous because everybody loves the show. Always leave the party when it’s at its height, not when it’s going down.”
And keeping with Cox’s unfiltered persona, he made a dig at another HBO series that might have overstayed its welcome: “You think about ‘Game of Thrones,’ when they didn’t know what they were doing at the end, and they had an ending which was not really satisfactory. And the audience was furious.”
When discussing the often-covered topic of method acting (something in this interview that Cox describes as “walking constipation”), Cox said that he doesn’t judge Logan — sort of. “I don’t judge him in one sense. But in another sense, I do judge him. I think he’s extremely stupid. I think anybody who plows that particular furrow is extremely stupid,” Cox said. “But then my job is to hold the mirror up to nature. My job is not to give my view, my job is to say: ‘This is the man. Whether you like him or not, here he is.’ And I will infuse him with all the complications that we all have. So yeah, I do the same thing.”
Later in the interview, he did say that Logan is “misunderstood” and there’s “a lot of goodness to him.”
Towards the end of the interview, Cox, who is planning on making his feature directorial debut and to star in a stage production of the famously difficult “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” next spring, said that he hopes that Logan Roy isn’t the role that defines him. But he fully acknowledges that it might not be up to him.
“I’ve done a lot of great work. [“Succession”] is a very special work that I’ve done, and it’s given me so much, and I’m really eternally grateful for it. But it’s only a stop on the way. It is not the destination, as far as I’m concerned. Now that may be wrong. That may define me. But I’m just going to go on regardless,” Cox said.
“Succession” airs on HBO (and streams on HBO Max) every Sunday.
