Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: My next guest is award winning actor Brian Cox, who
Speaker 2: plays the patriarch and media titan Logan Roy in HBO's
Speaker 2: hit drama Succession.
Speaker 3: Please welcome Brian Cox. That mister Brian Cox.
Speaker 4: Hello, trouble Wow, Wow, this is this is these are
Speaker 4: These are tough interviews for me because I I you know,
Speaker 4: whenever you speak to somebody who you've admired for so long,
Speaker 4: you have to try and gather all your thoughts.
Speaker 2: I have to breathe a little bit. You you're you're
Speaker 2: easily one of my favorite actors in all of like
Speaker 2: my favorite movies. You like the best bad guy, and
Speaker 2: in real life you're such a good guy, which makes
Speaker 2: me go, like you even a better act than you say.
Speaker 1: I'm rambling now.
Speaker 5: I'm just welcome to Welcome to the show. No good
Speaker 5: to have you come to the show.
Speaker 6: Very nice to be No. I. I you know, I
Speaker 6: was just watching that clip and it was very depressing
Speaker 6: because that's not me, and I keep that's why I
Speaker 6: never watched the show.
Speaker 5: Oh really, Oh no, I.
Speaker 6: Never watch it because I can't bear this. I can't
Speaker 6: bear that guy. Well, actually that's not true. I quite
Speaker 6: like him, but but there's an aspect of him that
Speaker 6: I go, why, you know, why can't you just be
Speaker 6: a little nicer time?
Speaker 2: You know, I think that's why the show is watched
Speaker 2: the way. I remember when Succession started, the thing that
Speaker 2: everybody says you. All my friends said was, have you
Speaker 2: watched Succession? I said no, I haven't. The said you
Speaker 2: watch it. I said, okay, I'm gonna watch it, and
Speaker 2: then they said, you're gonna hate everybody, but you won't
Speaker 2: be able to stop watching. And then when you watch
Speaker 2: the show, you start to realize why, Like, your character
Speaker 2: is one of the most gripping characters, is an asshole.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, we want you to win sometimes,
Speaker 2: but you shouldn't want to win. And you are the
Speaker 2: complete opposite of this character. And I think that's why
Speaker 2: it works. You bring up something like an empathy maybe
Speaker 2: in the character.
Speaker 6: I mean, I have a lot of sympathy with him.
Speaker 6: I mean both he and I are disappointed in the
Speaker 6: human experiment. Oh wow, we you know, we think that
Speaker 6: humans have really screwed the whole thing up, and it's
Speaker 6: getting worse on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: It is you can plow it as much as you like.
Speaker 6: It is getting bad, but it is. And we've never
Speaker 6: been in such a bad time as we are at
Speaker 6: the moment, what with the Ukraine and the fact that
Speaker 6: we've had this ridiculous pink Pinocchio that's been the president
Speaker 6: here and then we've brought this clown from Eaton who's
Speaker 6: now finally trying to I don't know what he's doing,
Speaker 6: that lying Pratt from London, and it's just really bad.
Speaker 6: So both Logan and I we have a chat occasionally,
Speaker 6: and we've decided that the human experiment is in a
Speaker 6: pretty bad place.
Speaker 2: But you have different ways of responding to it, you
Speaker 2: know where you know, you've always been somebody who is
Speaker 2: fighting for the working class.
Speaker 3: You're the complete opposite.
Speaker 1: Of your character.
Speaker 6: I'm an optimist. I mean, that's the other thing. I
Speaker 6: mean Logan isn't.
Speaker 1: He's a pessimist.
Speaker 6: And I do believe that human beings can get better,
Speaker 6: but they've got to do a lot of work. You've
Speaker 6: got to work for.
Speaker 2: You were you always an optimist even as a child,
Speaker 2: because I I've read about your childhood and.
Speaker 3: You really lived a rough childhood.
Speaker 6: You really did well, you know, it was rough, but
Speaker 6: a lot of the time, I didn't notice because I
Speaker 6: was just getting on with it. Interesting, you just have
Speaker 6: to get on with.
Speaker 1: It, you know.
Speaker 6: You dealt with a hand of cards, and you go, oh,
Speaker 6: this is the hand I've got. I see how what
Speaker 6: am I going to do with this hand? And you
Speaker 6: do it as best you can and there's no good
Speaker 6: moaning about it. And you know, the things that happened
Speaker 6: to me, you know, were pretty not nice, but at
Speaker 6: the same time, it's also made me who I am,
Speaker 6: so in a way, you have to be grateful for that,
Speaker 6: which is ungrateful.
Speaker 5: Yes, that makes sense.
Speaker 6: Yes, the reason you were exactly. And I feel blessed,
Speaker 6: you know. I feel blessed really with my career and
Speaker 6: with the work I've been I've been able to do
Speaker 6: over the years. So I don't have any regrets at all.
Speaker 6: I mean, my parents were wonderful people. They died far
Speaker 6: too early in my life, but I remember them very
Speaker 6: fondly and I still carry them with me, and I
Speaker 6: believe that. I believe that's the most important thing in life,
Speaker 6: is to honor your mother and your father, because they're
Speaker 6: the only proof you've got. There's nothing else. It's all
Speaker 6: made up all around you. But the reality is there
Speaker 6: was mum, there was dad, they did the business and
Speaker 6: you came out. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, how you know, I've noticed this about you,
Speaker 2: and there are a few other actors, you know, out
Speaker 2: of the UK where you were approach what you do
Speaker 2: very much in like a working way.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. You know, for many American actors oftentimes
Speaker 2: it can be like the celebrity and this and that.
Speaker 2: But with you, you have like a very much like
Speaker 2: I go to work, I do the thing, and then
Speaker 2: I go home and you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's also to do with our training. You know,
Speaker 6: we have really great training back home, and it's classical training,
Speaker 6: so and it goes a long way back right to
Speaker 6: Shakespeare and beyond, you know. You know, so in a
Speaker 6: way that training helps you. It helps you enormously in
Speaker 6: dealing with the realities of life, because it is work.
Speaker 6: Is just doing it and doing it and doing it
Speaker 6: and doing it and doing it, you know, and you
Speaker 6: don't think. I mean sometimes a lot of American actors
Speaker 6: they kind of treat it like a religious experience.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: It's so hard what I'm doing, you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: have to. I'm gonna have to remove these teeth. I'm
Speaker 6: gonna play this role. I got to have these teeth
Speaker 6: taken out, and it's going to be so difficult, and
Speaker 6: you go pretend.
Speaker 7: Just pertain.
Speaker 2: I feel like, I feel like all of that is
Speaker 2: the culmination of of who you are as a human being.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's it's it's a young boy who
Speaker 2: grew up in a world where you know, he lost
Speaker 2: his parents and then and then got into an industry
Speaker 2: that that really turned into a fantastic career and you
Speaker 2: become you know, such a such a reputable figure in it.
Speaker 2: And then on top of that, you've now used that
Speaker 2: platform to talk about the issues that are still close
Speaker 2: to you. For instance, you've got this documentary that you
Speaker 2: know that you've been making about income, inequality.
Speaker 6: Money, money and money. You know, you know, religion, all
Speaker 6: religions are kind of like culed a Sacks way. Money
Speaker 6: isn't because money is what really separates people, and those
Speaker 6: who have it have it and those who don't really don't.
Speaker 6: And that's what I've been doing over the last two
Speaker 6: or three months, four months, actually trying to understand because
Speaker 6: because I'm playing this guy you know, this fella, and
Speaker 6: because he is so impervious to the whole state of
Speaker 6: poverty that it's important to understand the wealth gap that
Speaker 6: is increasing more and more and more and more, and
Speaker 6: in the you know, in the United Kingdom and also
Speaker 6: in the United States. I spent some time in Miami
Speaker 6: and that was an experience in a half because there
Speaker 6: are so yeah, it really was an experience in a
Speaker 6: half because there is a lot of rich people in Miami,
Speaker 6: but equally there are a lot of poor people. Poor people,
Speaker 6: emigrant people, yes, you know, who clean up the rich
Speaker 6: people's toilets, who do everything, you know, all the menial tasks,
Speaker 6: and they are treated quite cruelly. You know, a lot
Speaker 6: of them have you know, like they're building these whole
Speaker 6: high rises in certain parts of Miami, and you know,
Speaker 6: people are literally being put out of their homes. You know,
Speaker 6: they're given six weeks to leave their homes. And these
Speaker 6: are people who've got kids in school, who has been
Speaker 6: very hard for them to get their children to school,
Speaker 6: to do certain things, and suddenly because they're building these
Speaker 6: high rises, fifty percent of them are empty, you know.
Speaker 6: But it's it's it's just greed, that's sheer greed and
Speaker 6: nothing else. And my my most moving thing was I
Speaker 6: was back at my hometown of Dundee in Scotland, and
Speaker 6: on that I met this man who he came in.
Speaker 6: I was working with what they called the Larder Kitchen,
Speaker 6: where people are poor but they want to give the
Speaker 6: dignity of still being able to pay for what they get.
Speaker 6: So I was interviewed and I said, so this is
Speaker 6: for your family and he said, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 6: this is not for a family. He said, I come
Speaker 6: here on behalf of these people, older people who live
Speaker 6: in high rises who can't get out. I said, so
Speaker 6: what is this you're wearing here? He said, oh, I'm blind.
Speaker 5: That's amazing.
Speaker 6: I said, what do you mean? He said, no, i'm blind.
Speaker 6: I mean I can see that much. He said, but
Speaker 6: I'm really I'm officially blind. But there's nobody else doing it,
Speaker 6: so I felt I should do it. And you go,
Speaker 6: this man's a hero. And that's the thing that's great
Speaker 6: about human beings. That's when the human experiment goes, oh
Speaker 6: wait a minute, hang on. There are a few good
Speaker 6: people out there who really do these selfless things. And
Speaker 6: it's very moving and it's very very humbling.
Speaker 2: It's humbling, it's amazing, and I'm so excited to watch
Speaker 2: it because I think you're one of the best storytellers
Speaker 2: because you're so engaged and you believe in it. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for.
Speaker 5: Joining the swank having you up so thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 8: My guest tonight is a wonderful actor who plays Connor
Speaker 8: Roy on the Emmy Award winning the HBO series Succession.
Speaker 7: Please welcome, Alan Rock, Hello, Senator.
Speaker 8: Hello, somehow you got it bigger welcome than Lindsey Graham
Speaker 8: last night.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that happened. I love the show.
Speaker 8: My wife and I watch it every Sunday night, and
Speaker 8: we're looking forward to Sunday for the premiere. Now, this
Speaker 8: is the saga of the Roy family. Yeah, and Connor
Speaker 8: is the oldest son and you are maybe the least accomplished.
Speaker 5: It's sick to say that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, okay, and I know this is going to be
Speaker 8: the last season, right, So how does it end?
Speaker 5: I can't do it, not even for you.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I can't do okay.
Speaker 8: Well, you're seeing that that clip you're running for president? Yes,
Speaker 8: I am, okay, So you can't tell us whether or
Speaker 8: not you win.
Speaker 5: No, but I'm working that one percent, man. I mean
Speaker 5: that's leverage.
Speaker 8: Okay, it might have been a tip off that maybe
Speaker 8: you don't, but you never know.
Speaker 1: Things get weird, right.
Speaker 5: It's a crazy show. It's surprising.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you can't out guess Jesse Armstrong. So yeah, he
Speaker 9: is the he's a creator and head writer.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah.
Speaker 8: And I heard him interviewed and he said that that
Speaker 8: your father in the series.
Speaker 1: Logan Roy has said.
Speaker 8: That that he loves all his children. Brian Cox has
Speaker 8: said that. Really, I mean, that's amazing to me.
Speaker 9: I think as much as Logan is capable of loving anything,
Speaker 9: he does love children. He's just bitterly disappointed in all
Speaker 9: of them. I think so especially you don't you think, well, yeah,
Speaker 9: they just they make me stand to the back of
Speaker 9: the picture whenever there's any.
Speaker 5: The oldest son and yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a sad
Speaker 5: little history. You know.
Speaker 9: He probably divorced my mother when I was about eight,
Speaker 9: and I lived with her for ten years and she was.
Speaker 5: In and out of mental institutions and I was in.
Speaker 9: And out of boarding schools, and I didn't see my
Speaker 9: father for three or four years.
Speaker 5: So it wasn't it was like Dickens.
Speaker 1: I think you know.
Speaker 8: Sorry, Yeah, so okay, still got it?
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 8: So in the campaign, and so do you So in
Speaker 8: the campaign you're running for president. There is a something
Speaker 8: interesting about your.
Speaker 9: Marriage, specifically something you want to.
Speaker 5: Talk about, not if you don't, what's for sure?
Speaker 9: Yes, my Willa was at one point a professional escort,
Speaker 9: and then I convinced with that.
Speaker 5: No, I mean, you know, you got.
Speaker 9: To make a living, and I convinced her to have
Speaker 9: me be her exclusive client. And maybe against her better judgment,
Speaker 9: she's actually developed some affection for me. I wouldn't say
Speaker 9: she's in love, but she's become protective of me over
Speaker 9: these and her.
Speaker 1: You produced a play.
Speaker 5: For her that she wrote, Sands.
Speaker 9: It was called Sands, about a woman who's trapped in
Speaker 9: the desert by an evil king.
Speaker 1: That sounds like it could be really good.
Speaker 9: Yeah, evidently not.
Speaker 1: It didn't get good reviews.
Speaker 8: I no, no, I remember the scene where she throws
Speaker 8: the iPad off.
Speaker 1: The off the yacht.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, she was, she was having a day.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So okay, So.
Speaker 8: The show it's it's it's going off the air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that must, you must.
Speaker 8: It looks like you guys love each other that you
Speaker 8: guys love working with each other. I've never seen it
Speaker 8: looks it looks like a tremendous amount of fun. It's
Speaker 8: a brutal, brutal, emotional show. But it's also quite funny.
Speaker 5: Yeah it is. It's wickedly funny.
Speaker 9: And I think something that helps it along is that
Speaker 9: all the actors are wonderfully They're just wonderful, intelligent, kind
Speaker 9: hearted people that are playing all these bastards, you know,
Speaker 9: so it adds something to it that you can't help
Speaker 9: but like them, even though they're miserable human beings. And
Speaker 9: I am going to miss everybody terribly, but I think
Speaker 9: Jesse's smart to ended on this high note.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, sometimes things run their course. But I just
Speaker 8: I'm going to miss saying it. But I can't wait
Speaker 8: to see It's Sunday is when it starts. So it
Speaker 8: starts this Sunday coming up. Does somebody end up getting
Speaker 8: the leadership of the company, because a lot of this
Speaker 8: has been all about one of the six things succession?
Speaker 5: Nice Jeff Anny, of course, of course. Yeah, I can
Speaker 5: just say that someone does.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 8: Now having gone through this, do you have any have
Speaker 8: you developed any kind of sympathy for like Rupert Murdoch's family.
Speaker 9: I guess I would be the Prudence. I guess that's
Speaker 9: his oldest. His eldest is Prudence.
Speaker 1: Isn't that right? I think so?
Speaker 9: Yes, don't ask me. But I don't really feel sorry
Speaker 9: for these people at the very top of the food chain.
Speaker 9: But they do have to do things that we don't like.
Speaker 9: If you fall in love with somebody, you just get
Speaker 9: to marry them or be with them. You know, these
Speaker 9: people need to be vetted by the family, and if
Speaker 9: you pick the wrong.
Speaker 5: Person, they just say no, no, you can't have her.
Speaker 1: So your wife, the call girl was vetted.
Speaker 5: Sort of.
Speaker 9: Yeah, they were brutally, they were vicious toward her. But
Speaker 9: since I am dismissive, so is she. You know, they
Speaker 9: didn't care about that too much. If it was Kendall
Speaker 9: or Roman or Chavn had married a questionable person, then
Speaker 9: they would have something.
Speaker 5: Because you didn't count enough. I don't count not enough.
Speaker 5: How many more shows, Well, there will be ten, ten,
Speaker 5: ten shows.
Speaker 8: I just can't wait to see it. And it's just
Speaker 8: been a masterful show. My congratulations to everyone, Frank Rich
Speaker 8: the executive producer, and just everybody.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a bunch of people.
Speaker 1: Well, congratulate.
Speaker 5: This has been the.
Speaker 9: Best bunch I've ever worked with, truly, so and I've
Speaker 9: been doing this a long time out.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and I know some of the other people you've
Speaker 8: worked with, and they're going to be really sorry to
Speaker 8: hear you know, some of us go on a publicity
Speaker 8: tour and then blow it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of their old friends.
Speaker 5: But but they're old friends.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, they're not the new They're not the new crop.
Speaker 8: Which is that's who counts everybody? New friends who can
Speaker 8: do you some good?
Speaker 1: Isn't that right?
Speaker 5: Welcome to show business. Yeah.
Speaker 8: If we have any advice for anyone, not just here
Speaker 8: in the audience tonight, but anyone watching on television, new
Speaker 8: friends who can help you.
Speaker 1: Out, count it out.
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