BRIAN COX’S MAJOR MOMENT
THE SUNDAY CONVERSATION,
NEW YORK — “I could tell you,” says Brian Cox, taking a sip of his iced matcha latte, “but then I’d have to kill you.”
A few hours before going onstage to play Lyndon B. Johnson in “The Great Society,” the actor is in his dressing room at the Vivian Beaumont theater, coolly deflecting speculation about who will be the “blood sacrifice” — the person to take the fall for a corporate scandal — in the much-anticipated season finale of “Succession.”
It’s exactly the sort of thing his character in the HBO drama, a Rupert Murdoch-esque conservative mogul named Logan Roy, would say — but might actually mean.
The bluntly profane patriarch — last seen smirking elusively in the closing shot of the “Succession” season finale — has made the 73year-old character actor into an unlikely social media darling, the subject of myriad GIFs and memes.
Like his onscreen counterpart, Cox grew up in a working-class Catholic family in Dundee, Scotland. His father died when he was 8 and his mother was institutionalized, and he was primarily raised by his four older siblings.
Days after wrapping production of “Succession,” Cox returned to New York to begin three weeks of breakneck preparation for “The Great Society.” A follow-up to the Tony-winning “All the Way,” which starred Bryan Cranston as Johnson, Robert Schenkkan’s nearly three-hour play charts the president’s final years in office. Next month, Cox will appear in the film “The Etruscan Smile” as a cantankerous, terminally ill Scotsman who bonds with his infant grandson.
Over the course of a long and winding conversation, Cox holds forth about the Scottish Enlightenment, the jute-weaving tradition in Dundee and the Opium Wars: “I don’t think we acknowledge history nearly enough. In order to know where we’re going, we need to know where we’ve come from.” Lyndon Johnson has intrigued many actors, biographers and dramatists. Why does he interest you?
I always had a predilection towards him ’cause he always reminded me of my dad. He looks like my father. Clearly, he’s a Celt — you could see that in his face. [He points at LBJ bust on the vanity behind him.] When he turned into the bad boy, I was always a bit sad about that. The thing that impresses me most about LBJ is the fact he was a teacher. If you think about what’s happening to children on the border now — well, those kids were his students. He had a great empathy for them and empathy for the poor. You would have been a young man when LBJ was president. Do you recall having impressions of him at the time?
I was at drama school with a lot of American actors. Their fate was that then when you left, you would get conscripted. A few of them had nervous breakdowns. The actor Michael Moriarty had a breakdown, and a lot of it was to do with what was going on in his life, but also the pressure of that was hovering over you. What excited you about this particular interpretation?
It’s a language play. And that’s why it’s very exhausting, because I can’t pause, I can’t take a breath, I have to keep it going. It’s very dense and it has to be played with incredible dexterity. Otherwise it becomes a tome, and it isn’t. Robert has these incredibly long sentences, but they have to be taken at such a lick to get through to the object at the end of the sentence. And that’s what makes the play dynamic. The rap on you is that you played a lot of bad guys in your career.
I have. I remember quite a long time ago when I was playing a lot of bad guys, I’d go, “Why me? Why do I always get to play the dregs of the Earth?” And then I turned [it] on its head and I said, “Well, it’s actually a privilege to be given the opportunity to examine human nature at its most basic.” But there was a point where I thought, “I’d just love to play a good guy.” Where do you think Logan Roy fits in this spectrum? His brother argues he’s as bad as Hitler.
I don’t think he is. He’s a sort of mystery wrapped up in an enigma. There are doors that he’s closed throughout his life and he’s not allowing them to open. But the thing that’s absolutely important to understand — it was the thing that I was doubting until I talked to the genius Jesse Armstrong [“Succession’s” creator-showrunner] — I said, “Does he love his children?” And he said, “He most certainly loves his children. He just doesn’t express it very well.”
My father died when I was 8. My mother was institutionalized. I really had no parents after the age of about 9. That’s why I personally found fatherhood really rather impossible ’cause there’s no template for me. I’ve never known how to behave.
I don’t do all of that Method [acting] crap. You know? But I think that’s Logan’s problem — that he was never looked after, that he was an abandoned child. There’s a history of deprivation at a very profound level. I get it. Is it hard for you at all coming from a working-class background to exist in this world of excess and greed?
Yes. The artistic responsibility is to see it as it is, which is a morality tale. It’s about entitlement and about the time we live in. You look at Ivanka, you look at Kushner, and the fact that they are in positions which they have never been elected to. There’s nothing democratic about where they’ve come from. And I think that there’s a lot of that going on in the world. People [once] understood that you have to earn the right to do certain things. People like Trump have evaporated that because of their own sense of righteousness. And his sense of righteousness clearly comes from abuse. His father bullied him and his brother died of alcoholism. All of these things have a knock-on effect, you know? That’s why history is important. We are victims of our history. He’s probably one of the grandest characters you’ve gotten to play.
Oh, yeah. And now’s he’s become this iconic figure. It’s really extraordinary what’s happened to Logan. I always knew the potential of the role. And of course they’ve now run with that potential brilliantly in this season. The most daring was the “boar on the floor” episode [“Hunting”]. When I got that episode, I said [to writer Tony Roche], “I don’t know if I can do this. This is really something.” He said, “No, go on. You’ll love it.” We know Logan is demonic, it’s always there, but it’s locked in the cupboard. You open it up and it’s, “Oh, no, shut that door.” In “The Etruscan Smile,” you play a different kind of Scotsman. Your character, who is terminally ill, bonds unexpectedly with his infant grandson. Did you relate to his journey? You had your two youngest kids relatively late.
My eldest son’s nearly 50 now. I remember I had to tell him, ’cause I don’t have any grandchildren and he was 32, I believe. So I had to tell him that my wife was expecting a baby and he said, “Oh, I have to think about this.” I said, “OK.” We were in Ouarzazate [Morocco]. So I’m standing in my hotel room looking up as he’s walking round the desert in Ouarzazate thinking about it. And then he comes back after about 10 minutes, and he says, “Well, didn’t you take any precautions?” And I said, “It was meant.” And then I said, “You know, I wouldn’t mind grandchildren. So I decided to make my own.” Does playing someone who is dying make you think about aging?
Absolutely. The great thing about work is that work sustains you. I haven’t done this kind of theater [“The Great Society”] for going on 30 years. When I played all the great classical roles like Lear and Titus Andronicus, I was in my late 30s, early 40s. Supposedly that was my prime. I’m not sure if that was the case. I think my prime is yet to come. But I called on that younger self. And my younger self said, “Well, I think we’ll probably find there’s still a lot of muscle memory there.” And he assured me that it would be OK. I’m a Gemini, so I have a lot of these conversations with myself. People are very obsessed with how you, as Logan, say “[Expletive] off.”
Nobody swears better than the Scots. The Irish are pretty good. But the Scots really do it, especially if it’s mean. My favorite quote from Logan is when he says, “My favorite Shakespearean quote is ‘Take the [expletive] money.’ ”