Succession’s Brian Cox on Logan’s Relationships with Women, What Really Happened Between Him and Rhea

Brian Cox of HBO’s Succession speaks with Awards Daily’s Megan McLachlan about what Logan’s relationships with women say about the Roy patriarch.

Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) relationships with women on Succession are some of the most interesting ones on the show. With third wife Marcia (Hiam Abbass), there is a rare tenderness; with PGM CEO Rhea Jarrell (Holly Hunter), professional camaraderie; Roy general counsel Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-Cameron), an esteem not reserved for cronies Karl or Frank; and finally with his youngest Shiv (Sarah Snook), there’s a respect there, when he reserves pity for the brothers, doled out like an allowance.

While his health suffered in much of Season 1, in Season 2 of Succession, Logan Roy gets his c-suite legs back and courts the Pierce family for a media merger, which involves leveraging many of these relationships with women. I had a chance to chat with Brian Cox about these female dynamics, whether there’s any truth to a past Gerri/Logan hookup, and the underdog for the successor position.

Awards Daily: Logan has such interesting relationships with the women around him. First, his wife, Marcia. She’s the only woman in his life who has a power over him. What do you imagine it is about her that impresses him and how does that affect his actions?

Brian Cox: The thing that’s impressive about Marcia is her constancy and how she’s a woman with initiative clearly, and they’ve come together in a very good way I think. He trusts her and he has come to rely on her during this illness and she’s proven to be incredibly reliable. When Holly Hunter/Rhea comes on the scene, she immediately gets sort of panicked. But the whole point about Rhea and Logan’s relationship, is that it’s totally a professional relationship and everybody sees it as some kind of affair. But it’s not. It’s for Dan to project that, but he sees it purely because she is no nonsense and she’s very good at her job. She speaks as she is. Of course there’s the political side of her, but absolutely he knows the animal and therefore there’s a trust he tries to develop with her and nearly succeeds, but it all falls apart because she thinks he’s too much of a killer. He misses Marcia because he misses Marcia’s reliability and obviously because he does love Marcia in a way. I think it’s become very complicated and sort of needlessly complicated, and of course Logan is somebody who cannot be bothered, he doesn’t go in for all that nonsense. He does feel very misunderstood on the whole thing.

AD: So Logan and Rhea don’t have any kind of romantic relationship? It’s just professional?

BC: It could get that way, late nights and all that stuff, but it is a professional relationship. Holly and I quickly agreed on that, and I think everybody agreed on that. It got to the boys, they start imagining all kinds of things. He goes to the bed in the morning, but when he goes to bed, he’s in bed on his own. They’re the ones who get the mystery going. And he doesn’t see it. Gerri is one of those incredibly hard-working women who he trusts and has enormous respect for. I’m not saying he’s not averse to some kind of sexual flattering possibly, but I don’t think that was the case here. But everybody else thinks it is.

AD: I wanted to ask you about Gerri. The boys hint that he might have had an affair with her at some point. Do you imagine that that happened?

BC: I think that’s possible. That’s a younger Logan. That’s a Logan probably pre-Marcia. That could have happened, a very brief affair at one point.

AD: Do you think Logan might use sex as some sort of tool to get what he wants? Is it a power move? Or just something that’s there if he wants to?

BC: They say success is the greatest aphrodisiac. He might be the beneficiary of that. I don’t think it’s something he pursues. I’ve thought about this long. I just don’t think he does. There are so many other things going on; that’s the last thing he’d want to do is complicate it. And he’s a man of a certain age. We’ve seen in recent times the fact that Murdoch ended up with Jerry Hall and he had a relationship with Wendi [Deng Murdoch]—you could see, oh yes, that goes on. I don’t think Logan’s averse to that. I just don’t think it’s key to him at this precise moment in time. That’s why he’s annoyed with Marcia because Marcia comes to the wrong conclusion; she doesn’t realize that the relationship is a business relationship. She projects other things into it.

AD: That’s so interesting. I talked to J. Smith-Cameron about Gerri and Logan. She believes that once Gerri was announced as the faux successor, Logan treated her differently, maybe more poorly. Is there any truth to this you think, maybe even in your performance?

BC: I think Gerri is one of those constant factors. He fires and rehires her. It’s their relationship. The Gerri/Karl,/Frank situation, with Frank you think, “Why is Frank still there?” But they are part of this professional family. He’s not averse to throwing people to the wolves if he has to, but they are his professional family and he has a certain regard to them on that level. And so with Gerri, I think it’s the same. He has an enormous regard for her in a sense of her constancy. Constancy is very important to him. He sees that, the fact that people don’t dump him. That’s what he can’t bear about his children; they are totally inconstant, particularly Kendall. Kendall is always on the make for his career and he’s not doing the job. He gets in bed with these totally avaricious people that Logan can’t stand and the treachery of that in the first episode and then Logan comes to his rescue because he killed that boy by accident. All of that it impinges on Logan in terms of how he deals with his family. Shiv can’t keep her mouth shut. They had a very good relationship and they nearly made it happen, and she’s very much in many ways his favorite, but she cannot keep her mouth shut. And then of course Rhea comes in, and then Marcia sees Rhea as a threat, and then all of that goes on between Rhea and Shiv and Marcia. When the women get together, it’s tough going. (Laughs)

AD: Do you think Logan has someone in mind to succeed him? Does he want Shiv to do it? Or is he mostly just toying with his kids and wants to live forever?

BC: I think to a certain extent, he does want to live forever. He doesn’t want to give up power. That is absolutely true. But I think it would be an enormous relief to me. What was interesting to me about the end of last year’s [season] was the success that Roman (Kieran Culkin) had. It was very low key. I didn’t go on about it, but the boy did incredibly well. In fact, he’s done better than any of the kids when it comes to doing the deal. He saw through something and said, “Dad, this is not real.” And everybody else, Danny’s character [Danny Huston, who plays Laird] had a vested interest, because he had a lot of money. Karl was also the financial manager. He was unsure, and didn’t go with it really. The boy did well. Roman did actually come up trumps in that situation. It’s very low key because there are other things taking over, like the relationship with Kendall, which always supersedes everything else. Kendall is such an attention seeker. (Laughs)

AD: Speaking of which, with Kendall’s crucial decision at the end of Season 2, do you think Logan is pushing him to fight back when he gives that speech on the boat?

BC: He’s placed him in an invidious position. He knows that the one person he can use because of what’s happened and he knows that one person he can put forward is his son. He doesn’t particularly want to do it, but it’s the one person he can sacrifice but not really sacrifice, because it’s his son; he won’t really be sacrificed at the end. The problem is that Kendall sees an agenda. Can I do it, Dad? Do you think I can really do it? Logan has to be honest with him. I don’t know. I’m not sure you’ve got the killer in you. You need to have the killer. And that’s the killer in terms of the game, the elaborate game of the corporate world. And then that challenge is thrown down and surprisingly, slightly amusingly, hence the smile, Kendall rises to it and commits the public act of treachery. Very public. And he goes, okay. We’re gonna take it from here, are we?

AD: I love that final smirk at the end. Is Logan proud of his son, horrified, or both? How as an actor do you hold your cards so close so you don’t reveal Logan’s real intentions?

BC: Kendall’s up there; he’s going to face the music. And in a way, part of Logan is hoping he’d do something like that, but also part of him is kind of, oh, I see. He really is a snake in the grass. (Laughs) So in a way, it’s kind of fatherly pride and also a kind of acknowledgement of the depth of Kendall’s revenge in a way. And he goes, wow, that’s impressive. (Laughs) For an actor, the choice always has to be the most unusual one, the one you don’t expect. It’s also sometimes the simplest one. I look at it and go, yeah, of course.

Succession Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on HBOGo and HBOMax.