Star of HBO's Succession Brian Cox has weighed in on the long-awaited news that Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch will be stepping down from News Corp, the parent company of Fox, and handing over the reins to his son Lachlan.
This is, of course, the basic plotline of Succession, which has long been said to have been inspired by the Murdoch family, so you might say Cox has something of a high-level understanding of what might have gone down behind the scenes at News Corp in recent years.
Speaking to the BBC about 92-year-old Murdoch's long-overdue retirement, Cox joked that Murdoch must have been watching too much Succession.
\u2018I think he\u2019s been watching too much Succession!\u2019\n\nAfter Rupert Murdoch stood down from News Corp, Brian Cox, who starred as media mogul Logan Roy in Succession, says there comes a time to step down from any empire\n\nListen to the full interview on #BBCBH, BBC Radio 4 at 9AM— BBCPM (@BBCPM) 1695538800
Cox's joke about Murdoch's Succession-watching habits was also in reference to his choice of his eldest son Lachlan over his son James or daughter Elizabeth, much like the storyline of the HBO show itself.
Cox, 77, recently lost his 92-year-old sister, and went on to share his take on Murdoch's staggeringly long career from the perspective of having experienced old age.
“He’s probably the most tenacious human on God’s earth. He’s just kept on going but I think eventually there comes a point when he has to stop and it had to happen and it’s happened.”
He stopped short, however, of weighing in, as so many in the media have, on whether Lachlan is most like Kendall, Roman or Connor Roy, Cox's character's three sons on Succession.
“I’m not sure which one he is because I kind of keep out of the whole Murdoch thing."
“Because when you play a role, it’s your creation. The one thing that there is in common is how little Rupert actually expresses himself and he allows things [actions] to speak for itself.”
But Cox did give a bit of insight into just how closely Succession might be modeled on Murdoch: he told the BBC that he'd heard Murdoch's ex-wife Jerry Hall had been forbidden from speaking to the show's writers.
On social media, Succession fans definitely had a lot to say about Murdoch's resignation.
@Variety— Charlie B \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6\ud83d\udc26 (@Charlie B \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6\ud83d\udc26) 1695302304
@Variety OH. So it's like royalty then. Right, good thing we didn't found our entire country on defying thousands of years of hereditary tyranny or anything. Because....it's bad.......or anything. Well......anyway.— Andrew Casey (@Andrew Casey) 1695309815
Lachlan Murdoch being made chair of Fox and News Corp boards— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE) 1695302253
@Variety Succession main theme starts to play— Marckos (@Marckos) 1695306329
Live look at Lachlan Murdoch after news of Rupert stepping down— Wu Tang is for the Children (@Wu Tang is for the Children) 1695304334
There's even a GoFundMe to get Cox to do a cameo send-off for Murdoch.
@Variety https://t.co/CMPVGGKI1T— Ashton Jobs (@Ashton Jobs) 1695368045
While Cox was complimentary of Murdoch's tenacity, he is certainly no fan of the mogul. He also gave a hot take on Murdoch's announcement of his retirement in which he crowed about his and Lachlan's commitment to "freedom,"
Cox told the BBC:
“Freedom? Freedom for what? Freedom to impose his ideas on other people, freedom to kind of manipulate certain things in certain directions? I mean, he’s certainly done a lot of that in his life."
Sounds a lot like Logan Roy—and spoken as only the man who played Logan Roy could.
