Succession’s Brian Cox Felt “a Bit Rejected” By Logan’s Death

Logan Roy may have kept everyone at arms length, but Brian Cox is unafraid to share his more sensitive side. In an interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, Cox revealed that he felt “a bit rejected” by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong‘s decision to kill off Logan Roy in episode 3 of the final season, a decision he felt was “ultimately too early.”  

“I was fine with it ultimately, but I did feel a little bit rejected,” Cox told Rajan. “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.”

Succession director Mark Mylod broke down exactly how and why Logan ended up on the airplane floor for VF’s Notes on a Scene series, sharing that he wanted the Waystar Royco magnate to have an “anti-Shakespearean” death. In the BBC interview, Cox—a storied Shakespearean actor—admitted that Logan’s death was handled “in a pretty brilliant way,” even though at the time he looked at it, “wrongly, as a form of rejection.”  

While he may have been disappointed to leave the show so soon, Cox went to great lengths to keep Logan’s death a secret. In the interview, Cox revealed that he was initially supposed to shoot scenes as Logan at Logan’s own funeral, in order to throw paparazzi off the scent. When he was told that he was no longer required to shoot those additional scenes, Cox still showed up to the taping of Logan’s funeral scene “on [his] own volition” to misdirect the paparazzi. 

Headed into Sunday’s series finale, Cox is still holding out hope that Armstrong has one more major plot twist up his sleeve. “I still believe this: maybe Logan isn’t dead,” Cox told Rajan. “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.” So don’t be surprised if Logan Roy rises from the grave in the series finale for one finale “fuck off.”