Brian Cox 'proud' he kept shocking 'Succession' twist secret

Brian Cox, who indelibly inhabited the role of media mogul Logan Roy on HBO's "Succession" until the character's shocking death in Sunday's episode, said in a post-mortem interview that he knew of that fate heading into the season and was "very proud of myself, that I managed to keep this secret. You know, I thought, wow, Brian, for the first time ever, you’ve actually kept a secret."

Speaking last week to Deadline.com, the 76-year-old Scottish actor, whose many films and TV shows include major roles in "The Bourne Identity" (2002), the X-Men movie "X2" (2003) and the two "Red" espionage-action films (2010, 2013), said series creator Jesse Armstrong "told me right before the season started, this was going to happen. And I knew that I was going to be going."

Now in its fourth and final season, "Succession," a two-time Emmy Award winner for outstanding drama series, follows ruthless billionaire Roy and the Machiavellian machinations of his children Shiv (Sarah Snook), Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) and other family members as they scramble to be named his successor at the world's largest media and entertainment company.

“He was always going to die. It felt like that had to happen,” Armstrong, 52, said on HBO's post-episode podcast, according to a transcription by The Hollywood Reporter. “That was always coded into it once we decided it was going to be the final season. Occasionally, when I was going crazy about what the end would be I would think, most tragedies end with the death at the end and we go back and look at that as a shape. But it really was this feeling of wanting to see how they would cope afterwards that was the prevailing one.”

Cox said that while he does not know who the eventual successor will be as the series heads into its final seven episodes, "My suspicion is that it won’t be the kids. I think that they will get locked out."

The star noted that when approached for the series, the role "was pitched to me … [as] a one-season part. So, on the pitch, I said to Jesse and [fellow executive producer] Adam McKay, so, this is a one-season part? And there was a pause. Jesse was in Italy, Adam was in L.A., and there was a pause, and they both went, no, no, no, no. So, I don’t know if that was the moment they made the decision, because we had a long, long conversation … ."

Cox — who garnered two Emmy nominations for lead actor in a drama series for "Succession," and had won for supporting actor in a miniseries or a movie for his role as Hermann Goering in TNT's "Nuremberg" (2001) — also revealed it was a double and not him on the floor of the private plane in the death scene. "I was never there. I wasn’t there at all," he said, adding, "I think it’s a phone and an ear. I think that’s all you see, isn’t it?"

The last Logan Roy scene he shot was, he believes, "the one moving towards the plane, for what’s the beginning of episode 3."