Family feuds
Brian Cox ready for fresh season of infighting in ‘Succession’
When the third season of HBO’s hit “Succession” series begins Sunday, Brian Cox’s Logan Roy, the patriarch of a global entertainment business, is in quite a pickle.
His traitorous son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) has gone public in an attempt to destroy his father and seize control of the company. Kendall’s three self-centered siblings are pressured to choose sides by the increasingly public spectacle. As are the viewers. Do they join either Team Logan or Team Kendall, Cox was asked last week in a phone interview. Or is this a battle between the Young and their Elders?
“That’s what essentially it looks like,” Cox, 75, acknowledged. “But I think it’s more than that. It’s about naked ambition. Versus someone (Logan Roy) who’s already achieved something, achieved an enormous amount, and he’s trying to keep it all together.
“He IS keeping it all together, for employees, his children. But they’re not quite stepping up to the mark.
“Their problem is feeling entitled. That’s always the difficulty of the children! And that’s what he has to deal with on a regular basis.
“And that circumstance, unfortunately in this country — particularly in this society, in this culture — it’s a disease. It’s a disease of wealth. And that’s where the show is really. How it deals with that disease of wealth and what wealth takes away from you. It actually saw that — that’s the tricky thing.”
Cox, born in a poor family in Dundee, Scotland, the youngest of five, certainly never knew entitlement. His father died when he was 8. His mother frequently suffered nervous breakdowns, he was raised by his older sisters.
When he began acting professionally at 14, it might seem as an escape from his circumstances. Cox laughs at that notion.
Acting has been his calling, he said, “since I was a baby, since I was about 2 or 3. When we have the great Scottish feast Hogmanay, which is a celebration of New Year, my sister Mae and my dad and I would entertain all my dad’s pals and wives who came and celebrated New Year with us.
“I started off when I was about 3 with (Al) Jolson impersonations. That just got me — the atmosphere that changed in the room when one performed. I’ve never forgotten that. You become something else — and it’s infectious.
“That’s where I started thinking, ‘I like this. I love this kind of attention that I’m getting. I think I’m going to make a living out of it.’ ”