Brian Cox: Jeremy Strongs Method acting is fking annoying
Succession Season 4 has started and I’m so excited! The season 3 finale was brutal and amazing – Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox, brilliantly outmaneuvering his adult children and effectively taking the company away from them. Will his deal work in the longterm? It doesn’t matter, because to Logan Roy, winning is all that matters and he f–king won. Well, Brian Cox covers the latest issue of Town & Country and this interview is really good! Cox is a socialist, so he’s not really here for T&C’s readership, although their readership probably loves him because of Succession. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Growing up poor in Dundee, Scotland: “We were left destitute [after my father’s death]. Being plunged into poverty affects me to this day. It’s a demon in my life.”
He’s crafted Logan Roy’s elaborate backstory: “He’s not Rupert Murdoch. He’s certainly not Donald Trump, and he’s not Conrad Black. He is a self-made man, but there was something in his childhood that made him decide, ‘F-ck it. It doesn’t work. None of it works.’”
Cox & Roy share the belief that the human experiment has gone terribly wrong. “He does so from a nihilistic point of view. I’m an optimist. I believe if we can attend to it, we can shift it. But we don’t attend to it enough. But Logan doesn’t give a f–k. He just says, ‘That’s the way it is.’” Sometimes, Cox admits, Roy’s anger is hard for him to fathom. “It comes from a bitter experience. It’s a mystery, because Jesse [Armstrong] hasn’t revealed it. I mean, you saw me swimming [in season one, episode seven], and you see the marks on my back. But it’s never explained. I have a sneaking affection for Logan. I think he’s a misunderstood man.”
He thinks Logan does love his children: He says Armstrong insisted to him that Logan Roy loves his children, and so he is disappointed in them. Kendall has turned on him. Roman is a bit of a weirdo. Connor is off in la-la land and Shiv, who Cox says Logan was hoping would be the One, “can’t keep her mouth shut. She’s got no reserve, no tactical skill, no subtlety whatsoever, and that’s why she fell out of place.”
The season 3 finale: “They are wedded to avarice,” Cox says of the Roy children. “He can see that, and he knows it’s his creation. He knows that they’re going to f–k it up. He knows that they haven’t got the stuff to do it but they’ll try anyway. And that, again, is what the show is all about: entitlement.”
On Jeremy Strong’s Method acting: “He’s a very good actor. And the rest of the ensemble is all okay with this. But knowing a character and what the character does is only part of the skill set.” Is it annoying being around someone who is always in character? “Oh, it’s f–king annoying. Don’t get me going on it.”
Cox on Strong’s dark, emotional scenes: Cox says he thinks Strong played the moment extremely well, but he was, again, surprised that he wouldn’t break out of character once it wrapped. “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–king gifted. When you’ve got the gift, celebrate the gift. Go back to your trailer and have a hit of marijuana, you know?”
He believes ‘Succession’ is essentially a satire: “It’s essentially satirical,” he says. He also believes the writers have written the show from a socialist perspective, although I tell him I don’t think Americans see it that way. “It’s a critique. But the interesting thing is that people love it. They love the characters. They love that degree of selfishness. They think, Isn’t it great how nasty they are? And that’s the thing that you can’t account for.”
I don’t think he’s wrong or right about Jeremy Strong, who has talked openly about his process and how he feels he needs to go to these lengths to ensure his performance as Kendall Roy. This argument between the American “Method” actors versus the British “just say your lines and go home” actors has been going on for decades, even before Laurence Olivier told Dustin Hoffman that he was doing way too much. Cox clearly respects the performance Strong gives – and Strong is the one winning awards – but yeah, Cox has gone on the record multiple times about how he wishes Strong would go easier on himself. Cox has a point – if Strong continues to pour all of his time and effort into every role, he’s going to burn out. In recent interviews, Strong has already said as much, that he’s feeling burned out.
My theory about why people enjoy Succession is that it shows us that even people with money, power, great homes and access to the best things in life are still unfulfilled, miserable, petty and awful. It makes me feel better about myself. And he’s so right about Shiv – lol.
Covers courtesy of Town & Country.
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