Last night on Real Time with Bill Maher, the star of HBO drama Succession, Brian Cox, appeared as the mid-show interview guest. It was during his moment that we learned an awful lot about the man who bore a Scottish flag pin on his lapel and shared his story of growing up poor in Dundee, Scotland.
Golden Globe-winning actor Brian Cox jokes with Maher about his late-in-life “sexy” leading man cred he has earned playing the flawed and manipulative patriarch on HBO’s Succession, and he even shared his views on world politics, and surprise, he’s no venture capitalist like Logan Roy.
In fact, we learn that Cox met Maher many years ago and noted the host of the HBO chat show was likely stoned.
Who is Brian Cox?
Cox is a famous Scottish actor who has had a long career. Cox was born in 1946 in Dundee, Scotland. Over time the actor has earned several awards including an Emmy award. He is also a two-time Olivier Award-winning actor.
He is known for portraying Logan Roy in HBO’s drama Succession, and for film roles in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Bourne Supremacy, Troy, X-Men 2, The Bourne Identity, Super Troopers, and in the Mel Gibson blockbuster, Braveheart.
His character on Succession, Logan Roy, is a self made billionaire, and founder and CEO of the media conglomerate Waystar Royco and is the patriarch of The Roy Family. And like Cox the actor, Roy, too, was born into poverty in Dundee, Scotland then sent to Quebec, Canada. He parlayed his work into a global media conglomerate.
What did Brian Cox say on Real Time?
We learned first and foremost that Brian Cox wants Scotland to be free of British rule.
Of his Scotland, he said: “Well actually, my home left me because of family circumstances… so I was on my own…It’s the way of poverty actually, that’s what it’s about.”
When Maher pressed him on his politics, he clarified what his stance was and his feelings about Scotland, saying: “Well, really [I am] a social democrat and subsequently a supporter of my country, Scotland..as a separate country because it’s been watching I mean because it’s been treated like a s**t pile for long enough.”
He elaborated on the schism between Scotland and England: “I grew up in a town called Dundee, which is my hometown and I used to look at the River Tay, and I used to I couldn’t wait to get across it… and I did get across it …those days it was North Britain that’s what it was, because we had been through two wars…and the Scots have been like cannon fodder and particularly in the First World War and the Second World War…we’ve [Scottish] always been treated very feudally, and that still goes on.”
Real Time airs Friday nights at 10/9c on HBO.