“Succession” shocked viewers when, in the third episode of Season 4, the series suddenly killed off its lead character.
Of course, the death of Logan Roy was somewhat inevitable, as the Waystar CEO suffers a health crisis in the series’ first episode — and the show is called “Succession,” after all. But nonetheless, Brian Cox thinks he was written off the show “too early.”
In an interview with BBC’s Amol Rajan, Cox said of Logan’s surprise death, “I was fine with it ultimately, but I did feel a little bit rejected. You know, I felt a little bit, oh, all the work I’ve done and finally I’m going to, you know, end up as an ear on a carpet of a plane.”
Logan dies while on a private jet flying to Norway with Waystar’s top brass — including Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), Karolina (Dagmara Dominczyk), Frank (Peter Friedman) and Karl (David Rasche) — while his children are gathered at sea for Connor’s (Alan Ruck) wedding.
While Cox admitted that Logan’s death was handled “in a pretty brilliant way,” he looked on it “wrongly, as a form of rejection.”
Cox also spoke of showing up to his own character’s funeral “on my own volition” to shoot false scenes in order to fake out paparazzi. And the actor also flirted with the idea that Logan could be alive, after all.
“I still believe this, maybe Logan isn’t dead,” Cox said. “This could be part of an elaborate ruse to find out. Well, if you think about it, from Logan’s point of view, he has to find out, how are his children going to behave when he dies, what will then happen? And the only way to do that is to fake his death and actually, at some distant point he’s observing the chaos that is following.”
But when asked if Logan will truly come back from the dead, Cox said, “No… I’m just saying that could have been a supposition.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Cox reflected on his childhood, career and the WGA strike in Hollywood. The full “Brian Cox: Amol Rajan Interviews” segment will air on BBC News channel.
The series finale of “Succession” airs Sunday on HBO.
