Brian Cox may have his reservations about Jeremy Strong's acting skills, but Strong is not having them and ultimately defends the talent that has kept him around for this long in the industry. What's more intriguing is that they play a father-son role on the same show on HBO.
Keep reading for the details.
Cox expressed his feelings about Strong's acting methods on their Succession series, which airs on HBO, as "f***ng annoying."
Cox explains further in his interview with Town & Country, published on Tuesday.
"He's a very good actor. And the rest of the ensemble is all okay with this. But knowing a character and what the character does is only part of the skill set."
The talented actor made the news in 2021 when he revealed his full-immersion acting methods which he adopted for his role as Kendall Roy.
The 76-year-old, who has experience working with other actors who put their all into their character, expressed his concern for Strong's delivery.
"I've worked with intense actors before. It's a particularly American disease, I think, this inability to separate yourself off while you're doing the job."
The actor went further to express his concerns again on a 2021 appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, where he said the actor gets obsessed with the work and he's so worried about the difficulty he encounters due to his inability to separate his character from the project.
"You can't live in it. Eventually, you get worn out."
The 44-year-old, however, revealed in an interview with GQ for their March 2023 cover issues published on Tuesday that Cox had every right to express his opinions.
“Everyone’s entitled to have their feelings. I also think Brian Cox, for example, he’s earned the right to say whatever the f—k he wants. There was no need to address that or do damage control.”
The actor admitted that he feels a lot of love for his siblings and his TV dad. He described the set as a family and believed they would also express concern about his acting.
"You don’t always like the people that you love. I do always respect them."
Strong disagrees with Cox's previous suggestion that there's an amount of pain at the root of his character on succession.
"I don't think there is. There's certainly a lot of pain in Kendall, and I haven't really met Brian outside of the confines of that."
He expressed his resolve not to stop his acting approach. It's what he's known his whole life; he'd do whatever it takes to deliver in every setting.
Strong continued on why his approach works for him.
“Which is not to say that that is the same thing as riding roughshod over other people. It has to do with autonomous concentration. It’s a very solitary thing. I think there’s very low impact on others except for what they might want to project onto it and how that might make them feel.”
The actor shared that he gave up much of himself for the success of the Succession, which made the work excruciating.
At the start of the Succession project in November 2017, he wrote a letter to himself and Kendall Roy that he shared with the author of GQ profile.
“I NEED TO BE STRONG BUT I DON’T FEEL STRONG. I FEEL COMPLETELY ALONE IN ALL OF THIS. I HAVE TO BE THE LEAD BUT I DON’T KNOW IF I’M UP TO IT BUT I DO F—KING KNOW.”
The show's creator revealed there was a point where he didn't recognize Strong while filming the first season. He shared that the actor interpreted Kendall Roy from a dark place and changed his physicality.
The actor expressed his love for isolation from his cast members on set as he's scared of forming off-screen bonds with his on-screen siblings that are too casual.
The fourth season of the hit HBO series returns to television on March 26.
Strong has won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2020.
He also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor-Television Series Drama in 2022.
He married Emma Wall in 2016, four years after they met at a New York party. They share three daughters and live in New York.
