Remember in 2021, when there was a viral entertainment news cycle after “Succession” star Brian Cox gave his brutally honest opinion about his TV son Jeremy Strong’s Method-style acting techniques? Well, strap in, because we’re doing it again, with even stronger opinions this time.
In an interview with Town & Country, Cox called Strong’s choice to stay in character even when the cameras aren’t rolling “f—ing annoying.” In Cox’s opinion, Strong is a very talented actor who could still give a great performance without being so intense. Strong stayed in character even after he filmed the emotionally heightened scene in the Season 3 finale where his character Kendall Roy confesses a crime to his siblings, which Cox found surprising and unnecessary. “He’s still that guy, because he feels if he went somewhere else he’d lose it. But he won’t!” Cox said. “Strong is talented. He’s f—ing gifted. When you’ve got the gift, celebrate the gift. Go back to your trailer and have a hit of marijuana, you know?”
For his part, Strong professes to be unperturbed by Cox’s critiques. In a recent GQ profile, Strong responded for the first time to Cox’s previous round of comments. “Everyone’s entitled to have their feelings,” Strong said. “I also think Brian Cox, for example, he’s earned the right to say whatever the f— he wants. There was no need to address that or do damage control…. I feel a lot of love for my siblings and my father on the show. And it is like a family in the sense that, and I’m sure they would say this, too, you don’t always like the people that you love. I do always respect them.” He said he didn’t talk to Cox or any of his castmates about their public comments on his acting style.
Previously, in a New Yorker profile of Strong, the often-outspoken Cox said of Method acting, “It’s a particularly American disease, I think, this inability to separate yourself off while you’re doing the job.” And in another interview, he said “there is a certain amount of pain at the root of Jeremy, and I just feel for that pain.”
“I don’t think there is,” Strong responded in GQ. “There’s certainly a lot of pain in Kendall, and I haven’t really met Brian outside of the confines of that.” Strong is known to isolate himself from the other actors on set.
Strong did not change his methods while filming Season 4 – and why would he? He won an Emmy doing what he did. But it sounds like Brian Cox has even less patience with Strong now than he did before Season 4. And Cox will always exercise his right to say “whatever the f— he wants.” Meanwhile, the rest of us get to have our own little opinions about Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox. That’s entertainment!
“Succession” Season 4 premieres Sunday, March 26 on HBO and HBO Max. Both actors are already widely expected to score Emmy nominations once again in the Best Drama Actor category.
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