2019-10-21_Time

120 Time October 21–28, 2019

8 Questions

‘

I’M LUCKY

BECAUSE

THEY ALWAYS

SAY THE DEVIL

HAS THE

BEST TUNES

’

said, “Oh, yes, why is she finding it

difficult?” And he said, “Oh, my wife

is Elisabeth Murdoch.”

Do you like acting in superhero

movies? I liked it at the time. It’s so

clear to me that there is an audience

that’s deprived of a certain kind of life-

affirming, humanitarian kind of cinema

that you just don’t see anymore because

you’ve got these multiplexes that are

five screens, and four of them are taken

up with The Avengers or Spider-Man or

what have you.

You are now playing LBJ on

Broadway in The Great Society. If

Logan Roy and LBJ were negotiating,

who would get the best of the deal?

They would both go away thinking

they’d got the best of the deal.

LBJ would think that he suitably

bamboozled old Logan. And old Logan

will think, I managed to get this guy’s

number.

You didn’t have much time to prepare

for the LBJ part. It was an amazingly

quick turnaround: I literally had just

finished that last episode of Succession

in Dubrovnik. It was 154 pages of

lines to learn and only three weeks to

rehearse. But I called upon the younger

Brian Cox and said, “Look, you’ve got to

help me through this.”

You’ve appeared in over 200 films

and TV shows. How would you

rank Logan Roy in terms of your

favorite characters to play? I’d put

him pretty high up there. He’s such a

mystery. That’s the essential thing about

Logan. In my time of life, it’s a great

role to play.

There is going to be a third season,

but there’s still a final episode to

come. Any hints on what to expect?

Well, I’m not going to give it away, but I

think it’s a doozy. People are going to go,

“Oh, wow”... down to the last frame.

—eben Shapiro

On Succession, your brother suggests

that your media-mogul character,

Logan Roy, is worse than Hitler for

giving airtime to climate deniers.

How important do you think the

rise of certain media has been

in fostering the current political

moment? I think majorly important.

Nowadays truth is way at the back of

the class. You’re dealing with massive

obfuscation on a global scale. It’s a dark

time, and this show reflects that time.

This is a question you should never

ask a parent, but on Succession,

which of his vermin prodigy does

Logan Roy feel the most sympathy

for? The thing is, and this is the truth,

he loves all of his children. He really

does. But he realizes in order for them

to succeed, they have to develop a

tougher skin. And that’s what he’s doing

with his children all the time. He’s end-

lessly challenging them.

You seem like a lovely man. Yet

you’ve played J. Edgar Hoover,

Hannibal Lecter and even Hermann

Göring. Why do you get cast so often

as the personification of evil? I try

to do what the old Bard asks you to

do, which is to hold the mirror up

to nature. The human condition is

essentially quite a tragic condition.

And I’m lucky because they always

say the devil has the best tunes.

You play the patriarch of a

family based on very real

people. Have you ever

encountered any of the

actual individuals in the real

world? I was in a café near

my apartment in London, and

this guy tapped me on the

shoulder and said, “Oh, we just

wanted to say we’re enjoying

the show enormously,” and I

said, “Oh, thank you.” He said,

“It’s a little difficult for my

wife at times, but she’s really

liking it, liking it a lot.” And I

Brian Cox The Scottish actor on 50 years playing the

world’s worst people, the secret of HBO’s Succession

and a telling tap on the shoulder

MIKE MARSLAND—GETTY IMAGES