Brian Cox, the Succession actor, would sometimes go into a “diabetic rage” while on set, according to one of his co-stars.
Sarah Snook, who played Shiv Roy in the HBO series, said that Cox — who played patriarch Logan Roy — had a habit of losing his temper during filming. The award-winning Australian actress told Times Radio that she thought her colleague did it to increase energy levels on the set.
Speaking to Mariella Frostrup, Snook said: “He has a habit of sometimes going into a false — or could it be real, who knows? — diabetic rage.
“I think part of it’s a little of trying to just jolt the energy of the set and rustle a few feathers, get it going and moving faster. The quality of his voice can be very terrifying sometimes. Thunderous.”
Fellow Succession actress J Smith-Cameron had previously said that Cox could be “scary” and “terrifying” to work with. She played general counsel Gerri Kellman in the show.
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Snook, 36, confessed she was fearful of the impact Succession could have on her career as an actress, because being known for playing Shiv Roy could have resulted in her becoming typecast.
“When you are known for a particular role internationally, there is a fear, I suppose, as an actor, that you might get constrained to roles like that,” she said.
“The things that had come in during the time that I was shooting tended to be of Shiv nature. For me personally, that’s just so far from who I am as a person — and not that I wanted to play myself. But I wanted to be able to stretch my wings a bit and kind of say, there’s a little more round here.”
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She explained that she nearly turned down the part because she couldn’t find something “interesting enough to want to play”.
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“She wasn’t familiar to me in a way that I felt that I could bring something that was great to the role that I found interesting enough to want to play,” she said.
“I didn’t know, if being the only younger female in the cast at that time, whether I would be a prop and tried to be made to the beautified version of me that the female character could be, then just sort of pushed to the side. I’m not interested in playing roles like that, so I was fearful of things being trapped”.
Snook is presently appearing in London’s West End in The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is now showing at Theatre Royal Haymarket.
“It is energising. I have no concept of time when I’m on stage performing,” Snook said.
“I think it’s one of those indications that you’re in the flow and you’re doing something that you love, that you’re really engaged in mentally and physically,” she said.
