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Jeremy Strong’s method acting has an impact on his coworkers.
The HBO series sees Strong, 44, as Kendall Roy — the son of Waystar Royco founder Logan Roy. The family routinely clashes over personal and professional drama as the Roy patriarch and his four children rarely see eye to eye on their legacy company’s path forward.
Kendall has taken the biggest swings at his father — who serves as both mentor and tormentor — and because of Strong’s Method acting approach, that means the actors have experienced friction beyond the script.
Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox on ‘Succession’.Craig Blankenhorn/HBO
“He’s a very good actor,” acknowledged Cox. “And the rest of the ensemble is all OK with this. But knowing a character and what the character does is only part of the skill set.”
But from thePutting the Rabbit in the Hatauthor’s perspective, there’s a precarious line between knowing a character and becoming him. According to Cox, Strong is “still that guy [after a take], because he feels if he went somewhere else he’d lose it.”
Cox adds, “But he won’t! Strong is talented. He’s f—ing gifted. When you’ve got the gift, celebrate the gift. Go back to your trailer and have a hit of marijuana, you know?”
In a 2021New Yorkerprofile, Cox also expressed a level of concern forStrong’s commitment to Kendall. “The result that Jeremy gets is always pretty tremendous,” he said. “I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare.”
In the same feature, Strong said, “To me, the stakes are life and death. … I take [Kendall] as seriously as I take my own life.”
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Season 4 ofSuccessionis set to premiere March 26 on HBO.
source: people.com
