It’s always a surprise when a telly underdog takes the world by storm.
Believe it or not, Dundee actor Brian Cox had little confidence that Succession would become one of the biggest TV shows on the planet.
He actually wondered whether it would be given a second season!
The TV and film star made the admission in a forgotten interview with the Evening Telegraph in 2018 on returning to Dundee after filming the first season of 10 episodes in New York.
Cox spoke to the Tele after making a flying visit to his home city to speak to performing arts students at Dundee and Angus College’s Kingsway campus.
He said: “Succession is a big thing I’m sort of locked into and I’ll be doing that for another season if it’s successful.
“I had a very successful time shooting it and it’s gone very well.
“I’m very pleased with what we’ve done.
“It’s a very unusual show.”
In Succession, Cox was cast as Logan Roy – the Dundee-born founder and CEO of the media conglomerate Waystar Royco and is the patriarch of The Roy Family.
Cox said: “It’s mainly British writers but it’s an American show and I play a guy who is sort of brought up in Canada but I’ve only just discovered he was born in Dundee.
“They said to me your American is great but they wanted me to be one of these immigrant children at the beginning of the war who started life in Dundee but ended up in Canada.
“It was a surprise because I just wasn’t expecting it.
“Initially I thought the character could be a Scots journalist similar to Rupert Murdoch but they wanted it more American but it’s a nice tick to Dundee.”
Was Cox right to be nervous?
You wouldn’t know it by its ecstatic reception of late, but when it premiered on HBO and Sky Atlantic it took a little while for everyone to catch on.
The Evening Express review suggested there were promising signs.
It read: “It’s early days, so Succession might go off the rails, but so far this family drama about a Murdoch-esque media empire is proving to be very entertaining.
“The first episode was a bit soapy, but Dundee’s own Brian Cox was wonderful as the patriarch who faces an uncertain future with his ambitious offspring vying for power.
“It’s Dallas for the 21st century.”
Succession made a splash and Cox returned like Bobby Ewing in Dallas after the blockbuster HBO drama was renewed for a second season during its first run.
The eighth instalment of series two saw Cox and his co-stars come to the City of Discovery.
The Dundee episode saw the media mogul reluctantly returning to the city to celebrate 50 years in the news business by dedicating a journalism school bearing his name.
An open casting call in the Hilltown for 350 extras was made by Scottish agents GBM Casting in preparation for filming, which took place in June 2019.
Scenes were shot at Gleneagles Hotel, Dundee University and the V&A, which was the setting for a surprise dinner to mark Logan’s landmark anniversary.
During the speeches, Jeremy Strong’s character, Kendall, surprised his father with a cringeworthy rap while wearing a custom Logan Roy-themed baseball jersey.
Warning – this video contains explicit language.
Other scenes in the Dundee episode were just as memorable.
Logan Roy dismisses the city where he grew up in the episode but after the cameras stopped rolling, Cox’s co-stars persuaded him to give them a tour of Dundee.
What makes Succession so compelling?
Cox said: “It’s a morality tale, that’s the strength of Succession, to see these horrible people. But they are also us, avaricious human beings and we live in a time of avarice, and certainly a time of entitlement.
“These very rich people of the world, like the younger Murdochs, these are people who have not earned anything, they’ve just got it through entitlement.
“That’s the big struggle for Logan – are the kids up for it, do they have the guts and the true killer mentality that success demands.
“The thing that differentiates Logan from the Murdochs, Turners, Blacks and all those moguls is there is no inherited wealth there – he did it all on his own.
“The show becomes right-wing, it becomes very disenchanted with any sort of moral compass.
“That’s why the show works and why it’s a brilliant satire on our times.”
Cox won a Golden Globe for his performance in season two of Succession and Jesse Armstrong’s drama suddenly got “bigger, badder, and blood thirstier than ever”.
The third season of Succession was delayed because of the pandemic but earned rave reviews in 2021 before Armstrong confirmed Succession would end with season four.
‘You’re pirates!”
Cox was definitely going out with a bang!
Roy’s fiery speech atop a makeshift stage of printer-paper boxes on the office floor of the Fox News-esque network ATN will go down as one of the show’s greatest scenes.
The strategy?
Kill the opposition by saying the unsayable.
“I’m going to build something better.
“Something faster, lighter, meaner, wilder.
“And I’m gonna do it from in here, with you lot!
“You’re f****** pirates!”
Warning – this video contains explicit language.
Shakespearean stuff.
But as the series finale looms, Cox won’t be appearing after Armstrong did the unthinkable and killed off his main character in episode three!
Our pirate walked the plank
It was a shock turn that left fans divided.
Cox too.
The 76-year-old Dundonian told the BBC’s Amol Rajan: “He decided to make Logan die, I think ultimately too early.
“I mean, he’d made him die in the third episode and it was a great scene.
“That’s why I didn’t watch it, because I have no interest in watching.
“My own death will come soon enough.
“But I just thought, ‘wow’, you know, he did it brilliantly.
“It was a brilliant scene, the whole act.
“I looked on it, wrongly, as a form of rejection.
“I was fine with it ultimately, but I did feel a little bit rejected.”
Still — 31 blockbuster episodes across five years was not too shabby a run for the man who once wondered whether Succession would be renewed for a second season!
Conversation