Brian Cox says the death of the patriarch of the Roy family during the last season of Succession came too early.
The Emmy-nominated actor shared his thoughts on the show’s choice to deliver Logan Roy’s long-awaited death during the third episode of season four of the hit HBO show, speaking to BBC NewsAmol Rajan in the lead Succession‘s final.
While Cox agrees that Logan’s death happened in “quite a brilliant way,” he said he “mistakenly” saw it as a form of rejection. He also suggested that it would have made more sense to do it later in the season, during the fifth or sixth episode.
“In the end I was fine with it, but I did feel a bit rejected. You know, I kind of felt like, oh, all the work I’ve done and eventually I’m going to, you know, end up like an ear on an airplane carpet,” he told the BBC.
In an interview on the Succession podcast, series creator Jesse Armstrong said he chose an early episode to allow the show to explore the aftermath of the Roy family.
“He always died. It felt like that had to happen,” Armstrong told host Kara Swisher. “That was always coded into it as soon as we decided this was going to be the last season. would be the end, I thought most tragedies end with death at the end and we go back and look at that as a form, but it was really this feeling of wanting to see how they would make it after that that prevailed.
While Armstrong is adamant that Logan is dead, Cox suggests his character’s death could have been a ruse, before clarifying that he was “just saying that could be an assumption”.
“This could be part of an elaborate ruse to find out. Well, if you think about it, from Logan’s point of view, he has to figure out how his kids will behave when he dies, what will happen? he said. “And the only way to do that is to fake his death and actually, at some point in the distance, he’s observing the chaos that ensues.”
At another point in the interview, Cox shares how he made sure the plot details surrounding his character’s death didn’t leak before the series-changing episode aired.
He recalls filming his character’s funeral scenes over a year and a half ago and being told that he was no longer required to do any more fake scenes, which were intended to prevent anyone from suspecting that it was Logan who had died . Acknowledging that paparazzi could be suspicious if he wasn’t seen on set, Cox says he went “of (his) own will” so that Logan would be seen alive, at what would eventually become his own funeral.
To prevent the spoiler from getting out, the scene was also labeled as a service to James Cromwell’s character, Ewan. The funeral episode took place during the penultimate episode of the show and was directed by Mark Mylod, who said it was nice to have Cox on set.
“It felt strangely Shakespearean, having this spirit in the church. Brian agreed to go as part of the deception that it was Ewan’s funeral,’ he continued. “We asked him to pull up outside the church at a very public time so that if any paparazzi or people were looking for those breadcrumbs, they would see him turn up like he was coming to Ewan’s funeral. So he also hung out with us at church, very much as part of the smoke screen to keep the secret.
