Brian Cox admits he has not watched Succession final episode
By Ellie Iorizzo, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter
Brian Cox has praised the writers of Succession but confessed he had not watched the final episode of the popular US drama.
After five years, the dark and satirical programme came to an end with an 88-minute finale which aired last week to critical acclaim.
Scottish actor Cox, who played foul-mouthed global media tycoon and family patriarch Logan Roy, was killed off in episode three of the final season of the hit HBO show.
Appearing on Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, 77-year-old Cox said none his on-screen children deserved to become the new boss of the family business, but confessed: “I haven’t seen the end of the show.”
When asked why, Cox joked: “I’m dead, dead people don’t watch things like that.”
He continued: “I’ve never liked watching myself for a start, and somehow or another because of what happened to Logan I’ve been disinclined to watch the rest.
“I knew how it was going to end because I knew that Logan had already set it up and so I gather that ultimately in the end Logan’s won even though he’s in the grave, but it’s a strange situation.
“I don’t cling onto things, when I’m over, it’s over and I go on, and I find that with this show which has been a great show.
“It has been one of the great shows of all time, especially for me, so I can’t complain.”
Succession first aired in 2018 and is the brainchild of British showrunner Jesse Armstrong, who also created and wrote TV comedy-dramas Peep Show and Fresh Meat.
Cox praised the writing team on Succession amid a strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) which has seen more than 11,500 members walk out since May 2, primarily over royalties from streaming media.
The actor said: “They’re the prime forces of what we do, we can’t do anything without the writers.
“I’ve been particularly lucky to work with a genius like Jesse Armstrong.
“They should get their just rewards for it. Unfortunately producers are the ones that behave rather badly, all the time.
“They’re the ones that are the manipulators and sometimes the writers get pushed to the tap-end of the bath.
“I think it’s time the writers, I mean they have done before in the past, but it’s time that they really asserted their rights because they are the main focus, that’s what you like when you see a show like Succession or The White Lotus – it’s the writers.”
Later on the BBC show, The White Lotus star Tom Hollander also spoke about the strike, saying he thinks writers should “go for it”.
He said: “Writers are the most important people, they are the primary creators and without them there’s nothing.
“They need to fight for their corner, and if AI is about to replace everyone script writing… then they need to hold their ground.
“What is fascinating about it to me is the way the unions have real power in America which we consider to be land of the free market, and the Thatcherite aspiration was partly the American aspiration, but actually the irony is in America the unions have real block power which we no longer have here.”