No./11 “I’ve been preparing for Logan Roy all my life”
[THE Q&A] BRIAN COX is back spitting insults for the new season of Succession — but a new memoir finds him in a reflective mood
FOR A LEGION of viewers, Brian Cox is now best known as fire-breathing über-ceo Logan Roy in Jesse Armstrong’s comedy-drama Succession. But as his new memoir, Putting The Rabbit In The Hat, reveals, it’s been a long journey to Logan: from Cox’s Scottish workingclass roots to numerous highprofile roles in films such as Braveheart and Manhunter — plus lesser-known parts along the way, including one in The Glimmer Man alongside Steven Seagal, an actor he declares “as ludicrous in real life as he appears on screen”. With Succession’s third season now airing, Cox doesn’t hold back.
Does Logan Roy feel like your defining role?
Well, you can’t ignore poor Logan [laughs]. He is a formidable character. It’s a gift of a role, but it’s also the culmination of my work. I come to a point now where I’ve been given this incredible thing to do. I’ve been preparing for it all my life, in a way, that one day the role would come along. The one thing I’ve really tried to be good at was my job. That is the best thing in my life — my work.
Where can Logan go from here?
I think he’s still dealing with stuff. We don’t get to see the reason why he is [the way he is] just yet. What’s lovely about the gift of Logan is his mystery. We’re going to be doing Season 4 in June and I think a whole new paradigm is going to be coming into play, where viewers will see Logan in, I think, a very different light. What I love about Logan is that he always comes in at just the right point. He may only have two scenes an episode, but they’re always memorable, because they’re the scenes that everything else is building up towards.
Do you prefer working in television to film?
I’ve always been a great believer in television; I think television is way ahead and much more interesting than the cinema now. A long form means that you can really do something over ten episodes which you can’t do in a three-act film drama: you don’t have the time, you haven’t got the space
In your autobiography, you seem to pine for the cinema of your youth...
Yes, the cinema I loved doesn’t exist anymore. There are no Darryl Zanucks, there are no Louis B. Mayers. Cinema is very different now, it’s all about Marvel, it’s all about DC. It’s kind of been taken over by superheroes, which I find I have not much time for, because I’m going, “Why don’t we just deal with real folk?” Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront, James Dean in East Of Eden, or Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop — these are the stories that interest me. I’m not interested in Superman’s struggle with Kryptonite.
You also write about your working-class roots. Who inspired you, growing up?
Albert Finney meant a lot to me as a young actor. I saw him in Saturday Night And Sunday Morning when I was 14. He talked about his background, being a bookie’s son, and I thought, “It’s possible.” He gave me hope. Somebody coming from the background I came from wouldn’t have a path towards acting now. The ’60s were the most amazing time: there was such social mobility. I was encouraged to go south, go to drama school, to learn my craft, and I had a grant, all my education and expenses paid for. Nowadays you have to pay for your education and it’s absolutely disgraceful. That’s why I’m a socialist. Now, we just don’t take care of our own: we’ve failed so miserably at that.
There’s a great Michael Powell quote in your book, too: “In movies, there are no big parts or small parts. There are only long parts and short parts.”
Yes, it was such a revelation when I read that. I’m besotted by the supporting actors, actors that people don’t even know, but they are the glue of a movie. I realised that was what I could do when I was young. Even in Succession now, I am centrifugal to the narrative, but the narrative goes on despite me.
We take it from your book that you’re unlikely to work with Steven Seagal again.
No. A Glimmer Man sequel isn’t going to happen.