Succession co-stars struggle with Jeremy Strong’s extreme acting methods

Some of the stars of Succession have revealed actor Jeremy Strong’s extreme acting method, and why they don’t agree with it.

Succession star Jeremy Strong won an Emmy last year for his portrayal of prodigal son Kendall Roy.

But in a recent New Yorker profile featuring interviews with the US actor and his co-stars Brian Cox (who plays his father, Logan Roy) and Kieran Culkin (brother, Roman Roy), it was revealed Strong, 42, can rub people up the wrong way with his extreme acting methods.

Strong, 42, even prefaced it with interviewer Michael Schulman, saying: “I don’t know how popular the way I work is amongst our troupe.”

Cox, 75, told the publication he worries about the lengths Strong goes to in order to play the role on the HBO series, which is currently airing its third season on Foxtel.

“The result that Jeremy gets is always pretty tremendous,” Cox said. “I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare.

“It’s the cost to himself that worries me. I just feel that he just has to be kinder to himself, and therefore has to be a bit kinder to everybody else.

“Actors are funny creatures. I’ve worked with intense actors before. It’s a particularly American disease, I think, this inability to separate yourself off while you’re doing the job.”

Jeremy Strong won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor for Succession at the 72nd Emmy Awards.

Cox also told of an incident in which Strong injured himself by jumping off a five-foot-high platform in a scene that was later cut, impacting his femur and his tibia.

Elsewhere in the piece, Culkin, 39, said he didn’t gel with Strong’s extremities.

“It’s hard for me to actually describe his process, because I don’t really see it. He puts himself in a bubble,” Culkin said.

Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin in a scene from Succession.

“The way Jeremy put it to me is that, you get in the ring, you do the scene, and at the end each actor goes to their corner.

“I’m, like, This isn’t a battle. This is a dance. That might be something that helps him. I can tell you that it doesn’t help me.”

While Strong said he doesn’t consider himself a method actor, he told the New Yorker: “I think you have to go through whatever the ordeal is that the character has to go through. And usually that means clearing away almost everything around and inside you, so you can be a more complete vessel for the work at hand.”

This story originally appeared on Decider and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Succession co-stars struggle with Jeremy Strong’s extreme acting methods