“Succession” star Brian Cox just showed his acting commitment extends even beyond the bitter end.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for “Succession” Season 4.
Though his Logan Roy character met that end in the hit series episode that aired on Sunday, Cox was so determined to keep the plot twist a secret from fans that he showed up on set after his part had wrapped, so no one would guess his character had been killed off.
“I said, ‘I’m coming in,’” Cox told Deadline on Sunday. “They said, ‘Yeah, but we’re not doing the scene.’ I said, ‘Look, I’m coming in because I know there’s going to be a whole lot of paparazzi there, and they’re going to be wondering what that funeral is.’”
Cox said the writers had drafted “a fake scene” with him at a church in order “to throw people off the scent” of his death. But the production was “running out of time” and they opted to forego it, Cox said. He decided to show up anyway, however, to prevent the possibility of being a spoiler.
“So, I said to my driver, I said, ‘Joe, let’s go, we’re going,’” Cox told the outlet. “So, and as soon as I got out of the car, there were paparazzi shooting me left, right, and center, and therefore, they thought, ‘Logan’s at the funeral, what is he doing?’”
“And if I hadn’t done that, if I hadn’t come, they would’ve gone, ‘It’s Logan’s funeral,’” he continued. “And I was the one who took that responsibility. They didn’t even think of it. They were so rushed, and so much, you know, this last season was very difficult to film.”
Cox was absent from his actual death scene on a private jet in the third episode. He told Deadline the writers wanted to keep the characters and viewers at a distance — with only “a phone and an ear” in the dramatic scene.
The episode provoked shock and grief on social media Sunday, as Cox’s towering narcissist character had been a lynchpin for the HBO series. Cox previously told The New York Times he thought Roy “would die about Episode 7 or 8.”
“The main protagonist is gone,” he told the Times. “And the kids are having to deal with it, or not. I think it’s going to be hard next week for a lot of the audience because they’re going to miss Logan. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing — I think that’s actually quite a good thing.”
Though some fans may be in mourning, Cox said he’s “very proud” for keeping Roy’s death under wraps.
“I thought, wow, Brian, for the first time ever, you’ve actually kept a secret,” he told Deadline. “It’s such a big secret.”