Brian Cox doesn’t regret turning down the role of Robert Baratheon in Game of Thrones

Brian Cox has been acting on an incredibly high level for decades; he was the original Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter, he’s done so much theater he’s got squatter’s rights at the Globe, and of course, he became a proper celebrity playing the irascible Logan Roy on HBO’s Succession. Who would have thought anyone could turn the words “Fuck off” into a beloved catchphrase? Cause Brian Cox did.

“I didn’t expect to get the success I did at my late age,” Cox told GQ. “It just happened. I happened to play a great role in probably one of the greatest TV shows that’s ever been done. The one drawback about this whole thing is the loss of anonymity, because I prided myself on my anonymity. Now it’s hard for me to go anywhere.”

"[Fans] always want me to tell them to fuck off! So I do tell them to fuck off. I’ve got to be pragmatic about it. People on the whole can be very polite, but sometimes they do get a bit aggressive."

Brian Cox was offered the role of King Robert Baratheon on Game of Thrones

This kind of fame might have come a bit earlier had Brian Cox accepted the role of Robert Baratheon in the first season of Game of Thrones, a part that eventually went to Mark Addy. But Cox has no regrets about turning the role down. “[That] one was only limited, I’d be dead within four episodes,” he said. (Robert Baratheon dies in Episode 7 of the show, but close enough). “So I saw the shortness of that. And again, it was early days, so the fees were not particularly wonderful. They did very well on it, but initially it was ‘suck it and see.'”

It’s difficult trying to picture Cox as Robert Baratheon. The first season of Game of Thrones aired in 2011, and Cox is 77 years old now. He’s over 10 years older than Sean Bean, who played Ned Stark, and nearly 20 years older than Mark Addy. I figure it might have looked mismatched?

Then again, if anyone can play a difficult authority figure, it’s Cox. He probably would have killed it, but I’m glad we got Addy in the role.

Brian Cox thinks Edward Norton is “a bit of a pain in the ass”

We can’t leave without surveying what Cox has to say about his fellow actors, a subject he has been very open about in the past. For instance, he’s previously talked a bit dismissively about his Succession costar Jeremy Strong, who played Logan’s son Kendall Roy. Strong took his character very seriously; I don’t think he was like “call me Kendall” even after the cameras stopped rolling, but he got in it. Cox seemed to roll his eyes a bit at that method.

“You just have to go with it,” Cox said of playing morally dubious characters. “You don’t have to stay there. That’s the problem. You’ll get young American actors who’re gonna make it a constant religious experience. It’s not about that. We are transmitters of a particular kind of energy. Don’t get in your own fucking way. That’s the job. It’s like working with asbestos: just be careful when you wash your clothes.”

Finally, just for fun, Cox brought up another big-name actor. “An example of that is Ed Norton, who is a bit of a pain in the ass. He’s obsessive. But also he’s actually become a rather good director. I saw the Brooklyn film he did [2019’s Motherless Brooklyn], and I thought it was really well done. So I had to eat my words, and then say, ‘You know, he’s done what he wanted to do.’ You’ve got to hand it to him. Yeah, that’s why it’s hard to write anybody off. I mean, the only person I probably wrote off was Steven Seagal.”

I think we can all safely write off Steven Seagal.

Up next, Cox is set to host the James Bond game show 007: Road To A Million, coming to Amazon Prime Video in November. If you pointed out to him that this gig seems a little lowbrow for someone who played an iconic character in one of the most celebrated dramas of the past decade, I think we all know which two words he would respond with.

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