Full fathom five thy father lies. On last night’s episode of Succession, the inevitable comes to pass: Logan Roy, blisteringly played by Brian Cox, finally dies. Logan goes out in typical Logan fashion—his heart stops while he’s on a chartered jet, on a trip to solidify the GoJo deal while skipping the wedding of his eldest son Connor (Alan Ruck). While Logan’s death just three episodes into the 10 episode final season of Succession came as a shock to viewers, Cox is not overly sentimental about the death of the Roy family patriarch.
“It’s about succession. You need a corpse,” said Cox in an interview with Vulture. “If it was a different kind of show, it could have gone into a more mysterious frame — Is Logan dead? That kind of stuff. But I think Jesse [Armstrong] realized it had to be the way it had to be, and he made the decision to do that.”
Armstrong told Cox that Logan was going to die before season four began. “He called me, and he said, ‘Logan’s going to die,’” Cox told the New York Times. “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.“
Despite Logan’s death happening earlier than he expected, Cox, a veteran stage actor, was not flummoxed or overly upset that his run as Logan Roy has come to an end. He also doesn’t seem overly attached to the series that made him a household name 60+ years into his acting career. “The problem with a lot of television, particularly American television, is it goes past its sell-by date,” Cox told the New York Times. “And the great thing about Jesse and the writers is they wouldn’t do that…Always leave the party when it’s at its height, not when it’s going down.” In that spirit, Cox did not attend any Succession script read-throughs after his death. “No, I don’t do any of that,” he told Vulture. “Once I’m gone, I’m gone.”
The hardest thing for Cox about Logan’s death was not leaving Succession, but trying not to spill the beans. “It was hard to keep a secret all that time. It was a long time,” Cox told Vulture. “When did I die? God, I think it was last July…I’m very proud of myself, because I’ve never been able to keep secrets. And this is one secret I actually did rather well on.”
While Cox took it in stride, other cast members were a bit more emotional than he was about the end of Succession. “Sarah Snook, who’s a wonderful, wonderful actress, didn’t even know the series was finishing until the read-through of the last episode,” he said. “I knew it was going to be the last season, but Sarah didn’t. I think she was devastated by that.”
In classic Cox fashion, he found a way to get a few more digs at method acting before he went out, telling the New York Times that “The problem with the Method thing is … I think [acting] is a lighter thing. You have to be more deft in your acting — still be in it, still be committed very deeply to it, but you’ve got to be able to turn on a dime. You’ve got to be able to drop it and come back. Otherwise, it becomes just like walking constipation.”
While Logan is dead, that doesn’t necessarily mean episode three is the last you’ll see of Cox on Succession this season. “I do pop back and I have a couple scenes later on, which is flashback stuff,” he said to Vulture. “But I didn’t really see the cast very much. I suppose the last big thing we did together was a retake of the karaoke. There, Logan really says, to me, the truest line in the show: ‘I love you, but you’re not serious people.’”
And although Logan definitely seems like a goner, Cox—perhaps in jest—teases that you never really know with television. “That’s why I think there was a very strong contention and very strong reason to think that maybe he’s not dead at all,” he told Vulture. “Maybe it’s all a ruse! If you think about it, the last image is a body bag. Anybody could be in that body bag … There’s a possibility.”
