SUCCESSION star Brian Cox has railed against “cancel and woke culture” in an interview promoting his new book.
The award-winning actor, who plays the role of Logan Roy in the hit HBO series, has written an autobiography titled Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, chronicling his experiences from growing up in Dundee to becoming a world-renowned star of stage and screen.
Speaking to Esquire, Cox reflected on some of the memories shared in the book – including the time his mother told Cox and his wife “we’ve all dropped bairns” in response to a miscarriage.
READ MORE: Succession: Why Logan Roy actor Brian Cox wants Scotland to break away from the UK
Asked why he’d defended insensitive language like that, Cox told the magazine: “Between my brother and me she had five miscarriages and when I came out she was lucky to still be alive. She said, ‘We’ve all done it’, that’s what happens to all women.
“She’s only the tip of an iceberg of millions of women who were in the same state: thwarted, not given the opportunity [and who] didn’t have that means of expression. I can’t bear the whole cancel and woke culture because it’s a sort of righteousness which is not based on anything of real value.”
Cox argued that people need to “accept the past”, and realise that certain behaviour may have been “disagreeable” but does contribute to our current society.
He recalled that he’d pushed for the Succession script to use the homophobic slur “f*****” rather than “nancy” because he felt that was more accurate for the Roy character.
“This is a horrible word, but he would say, “a f*****”, because he’s part of that generation,” he argued. “Cancel culture [is] not acknowledging history and the awful things that happened, it’s trying to pretend it didn’t happen.
“You have to acknowledge where you’ve come from, warts and all. In the book, I had to say, ‘Look I was not a good father, I was unfaithful,’ and it’s tough but that was part of what I was. At my age you have to just call a shovel a shovel.”
Cox also reflected on politics after appearing on last week’s edition of Question Time, hosted from Glasgow’s Strathclyde University.
“The Eton clown here, it’s so obvious they are liars,” he said.
“They lied about Brexit and all jumped onto this horrible bandwagon. Of course, Europe had its problems, but we have to come together, even though I believe now in independence for my country [so] it can be viable. My country voted to stay in Europe, so I’m well pissed off about that.”
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