Brian Cox Called Jeremy Strong’s Acting Approach ‘F*cking Annoying’ (Though Strong Is Probably Cool With That)

On Tuesday, GQ published a profile of Jeremy Strong ahead of the next season of Succession. It wasn’t as earth-shattering as the New Yorker one from 2021, in which some of the actor’s own castmates spoke their minds about his unusual acting approach (which is not quite Method acting). One of them was Brian Cox, who said he worries about the extremes to which Strong goes for his craft. Strong said he was fine with Cox’s comments, that he can “say whatever the f**k he wants.”

As it happens, on the same day, Town and Country published their profile of Cox, who doubled down on his comments. “Oh, it’s f*cking annoying,” Cox said of his methodology. “Don’t get me going on it.”

Mind you, Cox wasn’t trashing Strong. Far from it. “He’s a very good actor,” Cox said. “And the rest of the ensemble is all okay with this. But knowing a character and what the character does is only part of the skill set.”

He went on: “He’s still that guy, because he feels if he went somewhere else he’d lose it. But he won’t! Strong is talented. He’s f*cking gifted. When you’ve got the gift, celebrate the gift. Go back to your trailer and have a hit of marijuana, you know”

In the GQ profile, Strong essentially said there were no hard feelings about what anyone said about his on-set tactics. “I feel a lot of love for my siblings and my father on the show,” he said. “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.”

Succession returns to HBO for a fourth season on Sunday, March 26, which is the same weekend a lot of other hotly anticipated stuff drops too.