Succession star Brian Cox is known for his frank, no-holds-barred interviews, in which he gives his opinions on actors and directors he’s worked with, while pulling absolutely no punches. And the good news is that his memoir will be out soon – which is sure to be full of juicy gossip.
GQ magazine printed an excerpt from the memoir, entitled Putting The Rabbit in the Hat, and it delivered, with Cox slating half of the film and TV industry.
He revealed that like “every other bugger,” he was offered a role in Game of Thrones, as a king who is gored by a boar in the first season. He turned it down because the “money was not all that great, shall we say.”
Elsewhere in the excerpt, Cox praised Spike Lee as “simply one of the best directors I’ve ever worked with” and “I’d put him up there with Bergman, Hitchcock or Antonioni.”
Cox also said that he was asked about “Harry f-ing Potter” and that “all my pals were in it” but Brendan Gleeson ended up playing Mad-Eye Moody.
Cox was also offered the role of the Governor, played by Jonathan Pryce, in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. In typical Cox style, he called Johnny Depp, who famously plays Captain Jack Sparrow “so overblown, so overrated.”
You can read Cox’s full comments regarding Game of Thrones below;
“I’m often asked if I was offered a role in Game of Thrones—reason being that every other bugger was—and the answer is, yes, I was supposed to be a king called Robert Baratheon, who apparently died when he was gored by a boar in the first season. I know very little about Game of Thrones so I can’t tell you whether or not he was an important character, and I’m not going to Google it just in case he was, because I turned it down.”
“Why? Well, Game of Thrones went on to be a huge success and everybody involved earned an absolute fortune, of course. But when it was originally offered the money was not all that great, shall we say. Plus I was going to be killed off fairly early on, so I wouldn’t have had any of the benefits of the long-term effects of a successful series where your wages go up with each passing season. So I passed on it, and Mark Addy was gored by the boar instead. (I lied. I did Google it.)”