Waystar media mogul Logan Roy is one of the scariest characters to ever appear on the small screen, and Succession star Sarah Snook recently revealed that the actor who plays her onscreen father, Brian Cox, can be just as "terrifying" as the man he's portraying.
During an interview with Mariella Frostrup on Times Radio, the Australian actress — who scored an Emmy win for her performance as Siobhan "Shiv" Roy in the HBO drama's fourth and, sadly, final season — discussed how Brian Cox, who famously played the menacing and manipulative Roy patriarch, was prone to outbursts of "diabetic rage" while filming the acclaimed series. Via Deadline, Snook jokingly said:
He has a habit of sometimes going into a false — or could it be real, who knows? — diabetic rage, where he’ll go [growl] all of a sudden. I think part of it’s a little of trying to just jolt the energy of the set and rustle a few feathers, get it going and moving faster. The quality of his voice can be very terrifying sometimes, for sure. Thunderous.
The legendary 77-year-old actor has previously admitted to experiencing "hanger" onset, which Kieran Culkin — who plays Logan's son Roman Roy in the series — publicly poked fun at him about during an interview with Esquire. (He added that "there's no actual weight" behind Cox's outbursts.)
Cox, who has type 2 diabetes, responded to his co-star jibes, telling ITV’s This Morning during an interview last year:
Yeah, I do get hangry because I’m diabetic. I need my food and then I don't like my food, so I have a very complicated relationship with my food...I've started taking injections, so I do get hangry, yes.
Justine Lupe, who played Connor Roy's bride Willa Ferreyra, echoed her co-stars' sentiments about Cox, telling Times Radio:
Brian has moments of being incredibly intimidating on and off camera, he's got a power to him as a person, and I think he knows that about himself. That being said, he’s also one of the more kind people that I’ve interacted with on set.
We're not surprised that Cox could be intimidating on set. Even after Logan Roy's death in the game-changing wedding episode in Succession Season 4 (yes, year-old spoiler there, people), the character's powerful presence was felt long after his funeral. It then stretched into that shocking finale episode where the Roy father passed over each of his four children or any of his actually business-minded colleagues to take over Waystar Royco and instead chose to leave the company to his sniveling son-in-law Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen). (Justice for Gerri!)
He even managed to freak us out by popping up in an Emily in Paris-inspired commercial, which, though comedic, still featured Logan's trademark ruthlessness and thunderous roar.
Sarah Snook likely won't have as imposing of a co-star in her Succession follow-up, the stop-motion drama Memoir of a Snail, where she stars as "a lonely misfit who collects ornamental snails and has an affinity for romance novels." However, if you want to see Snook deal with Brian Cox's Logan Roy in all of his rageful glory, you can rewatch all four seasons of Succession with a Max subscription.
