Succession star Brian Cox says his ‘favorite line of the whole show’ is when Logan Roy ‘says to the kids “I love you, but you’re not serious people”‘ … and flags crucial moment when heir apparent was foreshadowed

Brian Cox says his favorite line from Succession was when his character Logan Roy told his children they were not serious people.

The Succession star, 77, appeared on the latest edition of The Starting Line Podcast, where he spoke with host Rich Leigh about the popular TV series from creator Jesse Armstrong, which wrapped up last year after four seasons.

‘It was a great role because he was also – he was a flawed man, but he was not – he was a serious man,’ Cox said of portraying the media mogul on the critically-acclaimed HBO drama from 2018 until its 2023 conclusion.

Cox said the line he liked the best came in the second episode of the fourth season amid a tense discussion between Logan Roy and his four kids – Connor Roy (Alan Ruck), Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong), Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) and Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) – over the pending sale of his multimedia empire, Waystar Royco.

‘My favorite line in the whole show is when he says to the kids, “I love you, but you’re not serious people,”‘ Cox said. ‘And it’s true – they’re not – it’s about avarice, it’s about greed and that’s not what he’s talking about.’

The Dundee, Scotland native said that Logan’s biggest foible was his love for his children, as three of the four spend the majority of the series plotting to curry the aging media magnate’s favor, and in turn, be named his successor.

‘The thing about Logan, he was a self-made man,’ the Emmy Award-winning actor said. ‘He was brutalist in his attitude, but also, and this was right the way back, his one weakness – which should’ve been his strength – was that he loved his children.

‘If he didn’t love his children, things would’ve been a lot things would’ve been a lot happier … he loves his children – that’s the thing he loves them all, but he sees them as wrecks.’

Cox said he felt Logan’s initial preferred successor in the storyline was Shiv – Snook won the Emmy this year for her portrayal of the character – but eventually shifted toward her husband Tom Wambsgans, played by Matthew Macfadyen (who collected two Emmys for his work on the series).

‘The person that he thought was going to be alright was his daughter, which she’s proved to be a bigger wreck than anybody,’ Cox said.

Cox said the Tom character – who is named the company’s U.S. CEO in the latter moments of the series’ finale – was earmarked by Logan for the throne when he cared for him in a season three episode when Logan fell ill with a UTI during a critical shareholders meeting, taking him to the bathroom multiple times.

‘Actually if you think about it … the way he was going with Tom, and how Tom was caring for him when he had this UTI, horrible UTI moment, and Tom actually showed some compassion,’ Cox said. ‘He acknowledges that compassion, so that Tom becomes the heir – he becomes the heir apparent.

‘He’s like Logan – there’s an innocence about him that gets caught in a violence.’

Cox said the Tom character has a ‘sort of homoerotic relationship … with Greg,’ played by Nicholas Braun.

Cox in the interview provided what he felt to be an origin story for the Logan Roy character, an ultraconservative media magnate who runs a Fox News-esque network called ATN.

‘You know he’s become right-wing and we could argue with that and certainly I would argue with that, but he’s become right wing for certain reasons,’ Cox said. ‘And reasons which are actually justifiable, because of his sense of survival, sense of what he’s … and also his endless disappointment.

He added, ‘I mean my feeling was that he when he started, he became, he started as a journalist, and he was probably left-of-center.

‘But radically more and more everything changed and he shifted because he felt that nothing was being honored in that area and therefore, he decided to you know, become more and more independent.’

Cox made clear he found Succession to be a pleasure to be involved with, and a successful artistic endeavor.

‘It was a great job. I loved the job, I loved the work, I loved the cast, I loved the writers, it was in, every aspect, it was great and it finished when it did,’ he said. ‘I think it finished right.

‘It didn’t overstay its welcome, it didn’t go past its sell-by date, it realized itself, and it was bold.’

Cox, who preceded Anthony Hopkins in the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the 1986 movie Manhunter, also gave his thoughts on the upcoming U.S. presidential election between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

Cox said of Trump, ‘Hopefully, he’ll be in jail,’ adding that while he likes Biden, he feels he ‘shouldn’t run’ at the age of 80, as he’ll be 85 when he leaves office.

Cox, who’s been seen in movies such as Troy, Braveheart, The Bourne Identity, added of Biden, ‘His brain is g