Succession finale not must-watch TV for star

The acclaimed series’ lead actor admitted he hasn’t watched the finale and is ‘disinclined’ to revisit the show.

Brian Cox attends the HBO's "Succession" Season 4 Premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The star of Succession has revealed he has not watched the show’s finale after he said he was written out of the series too early.

Brian Cox, who played media mogul Logan Roy, said his character’s children “apparently got their just deserts” at the conclusion of the Emmy and BAFTA award-winning HBO drama.

The final episode was broadcast last week.

During an appearance on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, he was asked why he had not watched the finale. Cox, 77, joked: “I’m dead, dead people don’t watch things like that.”

Roy died unexpectedly in the third of 10 episodes in the drama’s fourth and final series, kickstarting the process of finding a successor to his conglomerate Waystar Royco. It ended with his children losing out to self-starter Tom Wambsgans, the estranged husband of Roy’s daughter Shiv.

Cox described Succession as “one of the greatest shows of all time” but said he did not like to “cling on to things”. “I’ve never liked watching myself for a start, and somehow or another because of what happened to Logan I’ve been disinclined to watch the rest.

“I knew how it was going to end because I knew Logan had already set it up and so, I gather, that ultimately in the end Logan’s won, even though he’s in the grave, but it’s a strange situation.

“I don’t cling on to things, when I’m over it’s over, and I go on, and I find that with this show, which has been a great show. It has been one of the great shows of all time, especially for me, so I can’t complain.” Cox previously told presenter Amol Rajan that he had felt Logan’s death had come too early.

Matthew Macfadyen, who played the victorious Tom, credited a “brilliant bit in the stage direction” by creator Jesse Armstrong for the show’s final scene, in which he and Shiv are driven away from the denouement with her hand resting coldly and uncertainly on his.

THE TIMES