Succession: Jeremy Strong responds to Brian Cox’s comments about method acting

Succession season 4 is on the horizon for a March 26th premiere on HBO, but unlike the tense rivalry between members of the Roy family on the show, behind the scenes, the actors are diplomatic and respectful to each other. Brian Cox, the series patriarch, had made blunt, unfiltered comments about the practice of method acting, and as it turns out, his co-star Jeremy Strong is a method actor. Variety reports on Strong’s response to Cox’s comments and it’s a lot more tolerant than their characters on the show may have you believe.

Cox had expressed to the New Yorker about Strong’s method, saying, “I’ve worked with intense actors before. It’s a particularly American disease, I think, this inability to separate yourself off while you’re doing the job. The result that Jeremy gets is always pretty tremendous.I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare.”

Strong is the cover story of the latest GQ issue, and he addresses his TV father’s feelings on the subject, “Everyone’s entitled to have their feelings. I also think Brian Cox, for example, he’s earned the right to say whatever the fuck 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.”

Cox had further explained that he feels there is a pain rooted in Strong’s performance method, and he feels for the actor, having to navigate through that pain. Strong couldn’t disagree more, though, rebutting, “You know, I don’t think so. I don’t think there is. There’s certainly a lot of pain in Kendall, and I haven’t really met Brian outside of the confines of that.”

“Am I going to adjust or compromise the way that I’ve worked my whole life and what I believe in? There wasn’t a flicker of doubt about that,” Strong adds. “I’m still going to do whatever it takes to serve whatever it is. Which is not to say that that is the same thing as riding roughshod over other people. It has to do with autonomous concentration. It’s a very solitary thing. I think there’s very low impact on others except for what they might want to project onto it and how that might make them feel.”