Brian Cox is tucked away in the back of a restaurant in leafy north London, facing the wall, his baseball cap pulled down over his face. Since being cast in 2019 as the cantankerous, battle-weary patriarch Logan Roy in Succession, his profile has soared, the anonymity he had relished during his 60-year acting career now diminished. ‘It’s just the way it is,’ he says, equably. ‘People are always very nice. They can get a bit excited, but on the whole they’re nice.’
At least he doesn’t have a catchphrase that gets bellowed at him everywhere he goes, I joke. ‘Oh, I do have a catchphrase,’ he says, missing the sarcasm. ‘F*** off. Everybody wants me to tell them to f*** off.’ Of course, he regularly deploys it even when not in character. Our interview takes place a few weeks after his ES Magazine cover shoot — where the crew were met with an irascible Cox who had been ‘stuck in a f***ing traffic jam for three f***ing hours’ getting to set. The set being his cosy Primrose Hill flat, where every surface seemed to be covered in moody oil paintings, bronze sculptures, books and unopened post. ‘Are you an art collector?’ the photographer proffers as an ice-breaker. ‘What do you f***ing think?!’ Cox fires back. Meanwhile rails of clothes have been artfully manoeuvred into another room, which elicits a ‘Jesus Christ! What are all these f***ing clothes doing in my bedroom?!’
