“Knackering.” That’s the (very Scottish) word Brian Cox might use to describe what it’s like to have inhabited the body and being of Logan Roy — Succession’s ball-busting, tough-as-nails patriarch and media mogul — for the past near-five years. It has also left the four-time Emmy-winning actor with a serious case of the f**ks.
On Tuesday, Britbox — an online streaming service for Anglophiles created by BBC Studios and ITV — dropped an exclusive one-hour interview with the Succession star titled, appropriately, “An Interview with Brian Cox.” In it, the actor admits that Logan’s penchant for dropping F-bombs has definitely rubbed off on him in real life.
“I just knew there was something extraordinary,” Cox said of deciding to join the cast of Succession, which was partly prompted by his respect for creator Jesse Armstrong and the work that he had done on Armando Iannucci’s brilliant The Thick of It (which is basically the British version of Veep before Veep even existed… but even swearier).
But after several seasons of paying the Waystar Royco boss, Cox admits that he’s much more likely to drop an F-bomb without provocation.
“There’s a lot more swearing now,” Cox says. “Logan has affected me. I mean, I swore a bit. [The Scottish] are poetic in their swear words; the Irish are even more poetic. They can say the C-word like nobody’s business. But the F-word: Nobody does it like the Scots!” And when you combine that fact with a character as volatile as Logan Roy, Cox says “it’s a perfect match.”
“Yes, I’ve sworn in the past,” Cox admitted. “But now, [Logan has] taken over in that way. He has possessed me, particularly in terms of bad language.”
“An Interview With Brian Cox” is streaming on BritBox now.