Scottish actor Brian Cox has logged one of the most acclaimed runs on contemporary prestige TV as Logan Roy, the terrifying patriarchy of Waystar Royco on HBO’s Succession, before a dramatic turn of events this weekend inarguably changed things forever.
Logan was killed off on Sunday night’s episode, the third of the fourth and final season, expiring pathetically from cardiac arrest in an private airplane bathroom while his children Kendall, Shiv, Roman and Connor spiral helplessly below at Connor’s nautical wedding.
Audiences freaked out, but Cox himself either saw his character’s death coming or is categorically unbothered as a person.
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“When you’re playing a part that is removed in that way, yeah, it has an effect on you,” Cox said, in an interview filmed by HBO that immediately followed the third episode’s final credits. “You feel, ‘Hang on, this is one of the greatest pieces of work I’ve ever been involved in. And suddenly it’s no more, but it also reflects what our existence is about, because we’re here for a time and then we’re gone.”
“[Armstrong] called me, and he said, ‘Logan’s going to die,’” Cox told the New York Times in a call last week. “And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s fine.’ I thought he would die in about Episode 7 or 8, but Episode 3, I thought … ‘Well that’s a bit early.’ Not that I was bothered.”
“Logan was coming to a rest point anyway,” Cox added. “He realized that his children were never going to be—he’s got that great line when he says, ‘I love you, but you’re not serious people.’ And I think that is so fundamental.”
The actor also commended Armstrong’s decision to end the series with Season 4, before it was “past its sell-by date”—unlike so much other American TV. “I applaud the fact that he did that,” Cox said. “It was courageous because everybody loves the show. Always leave the party when it’s at its height, not when it’s going down.”
“The reason” for Logan’s death, Cox told Vulture, “was obvious. It’s about succession. You need a corpse.”
To be fair, there was one other cast member who was not surprised by the major plot twist, as revealed in the after-show featurette. When Jeremy Strong, who plays Kendall, found out Logan’s death would drive the episode, he deadpanned, “I wasn’t terribly surprised. I thought it made sense dramaturgically.”
One person who didn’t take things as smoothly was J. Smith-Cameron, who plays Logan’s right-hand woman Gerri Kellman.
