That look on Logan Roy’s face. What was behind that unique half-smile Brian Cox delivered as Roy in what constituted the last shot of “Succession” season three? Was the billionaire patriarch proud of his son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) for throwing him under the bus? Was he already hatching a plan to get back at him? Only series creator Jesse Armstrong knows for sure, but Cox has some well-formulated ideas of his own. But, we’ll get to those thoughts in a moment.
READ MORE: Director Mark Mylod on “Succession” season two’s gag-worthy final scene [Interview]
If Cox wasn’t facing such incredible competition from his co-star Strong he might be looking at earning a second Emmy (he won his first in 2000 for “Nuremberg”) for his performance. And, to be fair, despite a crowded field likely filled out last year’s winner, “Pose’s” Billy Porter, “Ozark’s” Jason Bateman” and “Better Call Saul’s” Bob Odenkirk he still might take the trophy. What he can absolutely take solace in is that the Peabody award-winning series is making its mark in television history and millions of fans are desperate to find out what takes place in season three (a prospect infinitely delayed by the coronavirus pandemic).
In that context, and the time to dwell on such matters because of the aforementioned stay-at-home orders, Cox jumped on the phone last month to discuss Logan’s love of the “game” and much more.
Please note: There are significant spoilers for both seasons of “Succession” below.
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The Playlist: Hi, Brian. How are you doing today?
Brian Cox: Oh, good, lovely. I’m sitting out here in the middle of the forest and it looks lovely, Greg.
That’s wonderful. First of all, congratulations on the last season of “Succession.“
Thank you.
How was the show originally pitched to you? Were you sent a script?
No, I had a discussion with Adam McKay and Jesse Armstrong. It was a three-way discussion conducted, Jesse in Italy, me in the UK and Adam in LA. It was a three-way discussion, which went on for about probably just under an hour and they pitched the show to me. And, initially, when I was told by my manager about the show, they said it was only going to be a one-season part, and I said, “Well, that’s interesting.” I was fine with that. And then, by the end of the conversation with Adam and Jesse, they clearly said, “No, it’s going to be more than one season now,” so obviously, they were hopefully inspired by the conversation, as I was because I thought this is a key show. It’s very much in the zeitgeist of our time, and I thought it was a no-brainer. I knew Jesse’s reputation because I spend half my time in the UK. The writing he did on “The Thick of It” was absolutely superb and then, of course, the work he did on “Veep,” so I was very, very gung-ho about it. And I love long-form television. I think it’s the best form. It’s way, way outstripping the cinema at the moment, and particularly at this time, you see it. People are watching things over and over again. It’s very much of the current mood, these programs, and I was incredibly grateful to be part of it.
I talked to Mark Mylod last week, and he had told me that Jeremy Strong knew his arc for season two before the season started, he knew where Kendall was going to end up at the end of the season. Did you know Logan’s arc as well?
Well, I’m one of these people who like to know what I’m doing, but I got into the whole thing of not knowing what I was doing and I was quite grateful for that, and it made it more exciting that, as each episode came up, I didn’t know where it was going. And I had ideas, and sometimes the ideas were fulfilled and sometimes it went in quite a different direction, but I found that very inspiring and very exciting. And then only for season three, which, of course, who knows when we’re going to be doing that, I had a meeting with Jesse and he told me my arc for season three. And I said, “Really, I’m not sure you should be telling you this. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea.” And he said, “No, it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.” And then he told me, and, yeah, I am very excited now, I’m really excited because I think season three is even more extraordinary than season two, but I can’t tell you about it because I’d have to kill you.
I know, but now you’ve teased! But just going back to season two then, in your mind, did you think that the season was going to end up with Logan giving up control of the company at all?
No. Logan will never give up. They’ll drag him out of there and he’ll either be in a box or they’ll have to drag him out of there. There’s a lot more to be done to get Logan out of that position. Logan is there and he’s like a rabid dog. He’ll do anything to hang on to that position. And I just felt that I knew where it was heading, season two. I knew it was heading towards some kind of showdown because of this awful thing about the cruises even Logan didn’t really know about. He left people to get home with it and, of course, it turned out to be a poison chalice, and he didn’t know, but he also realized that something had to be done about it and a fall guy was going to have to be put forward. And I think he always knew in his heart of hearts, because of what had happened in season one and the treachery of Kendall and the unreliability of Kendall, that he always knew that, in a way, it was going to be Kendall. I didn’t know how it was going to be Kendall. I didn’t expect it to go in the way it did, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be anybody distant. It had to be someone who was very close and, of course, he was the logical culprit, as it were.
At the end of season one, we see a side of Logan we haven’t seen before when he saves Kendall from the consequences of a deadly car accident he’s responsible for. I recall watching season two, however, and thinking there are shades of Logan that seem more caring and more fatherly than maybe he had been portrayed in the first season. Would you agree?
I think that’s quite accurate, actually. I think, in season one, first of all, we had the breakdown of his health and he has to recover from that. And then we’ve got the wedding and we’ve got the shenanigans of the treachery of Kendall getting into bed with his archenemies and that is unforgivable. The thing about Logan is that, and I [said] this to Jesse, I only said it once, I said, “Does he love his children?” And he said, “Oh, yes, he loves his children very much.” That is the given that, of course, your children are your children and you love them, however disappointing they might be. Let’s face it, they’re a bunch of f*ck-ups. In a sense, he’s looking for the right person and, of course, he thinks, in season two, he’s got it with Siobhan [Sarah Snook] because Siobhan’s his favorite and she’s non-aligned initially, but then part of Siobhan’s problem is she can’t keep her bloody mouth shut. There is a kind of logic about it and also he does feel for his children and he can see that he’s 80 now, and he’s a lot older than me, by the way, and so he’s looking to the possible what’s going to happen in the future, though he doesn’t think too much about his end. He’s very much in the present. That’s his great advantage.
When the show started the concept was that it was partially inspired by the internal drama of the Murdoch family. Do you think in season two it went in a different direction?
Yeah, I think so. I think very much so. Jesse originally wrote a piece about the Murdochs, I can’t remember, I think it was a script, a television script originally or a film script. I don’t think it was a play, but I think it was along those lines. and, of course, it’s sort of that story, but the differences become so apparent, the difference between Logan and any of those guys, Conrad Black, the Redstone people, Trump even, it’s not inherited, and Murdoch, it’s all inherited. They inherited a situation. Logan starts from nothing. He’s a self-made man. He’s an autodidact self-made man and he’s smart and that’s his strength. That’s the thing that gives him his strength because he’s not aligned in that way. Of course, money is major to him, it’s important and, as he says, “My favorite Shakespeare quote is ‘Take the fucking money.'” I’ve been looking at Shakespeare, I can’t find that quote anywhere. But, yeah, so that’s really where he’s coming from. And also, the other thing about Logan, which is slightly revealed in episode eight, when we had the family intervention with the psychiatrist played by Griffin Dunne, who unfortunately breaks his teeth, what happens there is that he says that the family doesn’t get it. They don’t get that it’s an elaborate game. And for Logan, it’s always a game. That’s what gets him up in the morning, it’s a game, it’s what he plays, and they all take it seriously. They take it the wrong way. Games can be serious, but they forget the element of lightness, actually, for the want of a better word, in the playing of a game. Kendall really goes to all kinds of lengths and beats himself up and takes his ridiculous drugs and shits the bed and does all that kind of stuff, and he forgets because he’s gone down a particular route. He forgets there’s an element of play about what these guys do, about what they do in that way and you can see it even now. There is always that element of, “Yeah, what are we going to do now? Yeah, I think I’ll play with that. I’ll play with that. Let’s play with taking over the London Times. That’s a good idea. And then the Sun, let’s play with…” There’s that element that I think is very important for Logan.
But do you think because it’s a game, Logan doesn’t care who he hurts?
I think he tries not to hurt people, but it is the school of hard knocks and sometimes, in games, you get hurt. The kids think they’ve got this synovial sac around them and Logan is well of whether that that synovial sac is leaking pretty badly because they feel protected, that they can bounce around, but, of course, they can’t, and, as soon as you start playing in the big league, it becomes apparent. And that’s why we have the discussion towards the end of two where he says to Kendall, he says, “Do you think I was ready for the big job?” And Logan says, “I don’t honestly know.” He said, “I just don’t know.” He said, “Son, I have no idea because I don’t know if you’re a killer, and you’ve got to be a killer.” Well, a killer is a position in the game. That’s the position in the game and that’s the position that Logan has always inhabited, but it’s still a game. You will play the killer, but it’s a play, “I’m the killer,” and that’s the thing that he feels what’s-his-name doesn’t have. He throws it out there. It’s like throwing down a gauntlet and rather nervously, and in a way, Kendall picks it up. And, of course, when Kendall picks it up, he knows what the consequences are, so he’s actually very amused by that. That’s why the smile because he thinks, “Oh, yeah, I know where I am. That’s fine. This is territory I know. I’ll put a little more into battle. It never stops.”
An interesting character that comes into Logan’s life in season two is Rhea, played by Holly Hunter. Do you think he thinks she’s a killer?
Well, she’s not, she’s very clean, the character of Rhea. She hasn’t got sentimental attachment or any of that, those attachments. She’s quite unattached, so he sees her as a [an effective person] who could do things in a very unmessy way, tough, very tough, but not messy, and I think that’s what he likes about her. And when you see that in relationship to Shiv, who is terribly messy, that could be a familial fault. It could be his fault for the way he’s brought these kids up. Of course, there are all kinds of arguments about that and they’re probably legitimate, but at the same time, in the needs must situation, she’s not delivering, and she does open her mouth, whereas Rhea is very, very circumspect. And everybody said, “Oh, they’re having an affair.” Well, Holly and I decided that we were not having an affair. That’s their imagination, that’s their projection because they couldn’t see it any other way, and the wife couldn’t see it any other way either, and they all build that up and that’s their problem, not my problem, as it were. Holly was great. She was great to play with because she absolutely understood. She understood the game and she also understood the rigid rules of the game.
Was the last thing you shot for season two the last shot of the final episode?
No, it wasn’t the last thing. I think the last thing I shot was the conversation on the phone with the English committee member. Certainly, in terms of the boat, that was the end of the boat stuff. That’s what we finished with.
Mark said you guys shot that signature shot twice, but basically the first one is the one that they used. Did the script say whether Logan is smiling? What did the script indicate to you how Logan was supposed to react?
Well, I knew how Logan was supposed to react because it’s a surprise, but also he’s pushed his son to the limit, so he has to do something in order to prove his worth to his father, and the way he proves his worth to his father is by betraying him, ironically. That’s the brilliant irony and the Mona Lisa smile is very much a smile of almost of approbation, but also a smile, of, “Yeah, thought so. Thought that’s how it would work out. Thought we would go this way.” The smile has elements of approbation, predictability. There are so many elements to that smile and, the smile, I can never remember if the smile was in the text. I think it is, but I’m not altogether sure, but it made complete sense to me that he was sitting there. And what I remember most is putting my finger up to everybody being quiet as Roman [Kieran Culkin] runs in, and I’m going, “We have to watch this movement in its totality.” And, of course, dramatically, it was phenomenal and, of course, the effect it had on the audience was stellar. It was really out there. The audience were going, “Wow. Wow. Wow.” It’s fantastic that it has that effect, but it struck me as absolutely logical, in the way of dealing with this boy, this troubled boy who shits the bed and takes too many drugs.
I think why it works so much with audiences who’ve seen it is because, as you said before earlier, it really does emphasize that this is a game and Kendall has now moved another piece on the chessboard and Logan’s excited because, “Oh, great. This is fun.”
Yeah, we can deal with this. And also an element of pride, “Oh, the boy’s taken up the challenge. Good on him.” There’s all of that and there’s also the other thing of, “Oh, well, here we go again. They won’t let me stop because now I’m going to have to nip this in the bud,” but that’s the challenge.
“Succession” season two is available on HBO Go and HBO Max.