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Times
19 hours ago
- Business
- Times
Brian Cox: ‘Wealth? I get embarrassed'
Brian Cox is back in the city where he — and the foul-mouthed media tycoon Logan Roy, whom he embodied so terrifyingly in Succession — started. Newly 79, Cox is rehearsing at the Dundee Rep, his first employer after, aged 15, he landed a job as 'assistant to the assistant'. He is starring in Make It Happen, a new play by James Graham, who wrote Dear England for the National Theatre and the BBC's Sherwood. It is a fantastical take on the 2008 fall of the mighty Royal Bank of Scotland under the ruinous reign of its CEO Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin. Cox plays the ghost of Scotland's most famous economist, Adam Smith, who is haunting Goodwin. He is a foul-mouthed spirit. 'It's an infection from Logan,' Cox says, crediting Graham's nod to the meta. In the play Smith, who was primarily a philosopher and did not even recognise the word 'economist', is shocked that he is remembered for his book The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, rather than his earlier Theory of Moral Sentiments. The latter insisted on man's obligations to his fellow citizens; the former has come to be regarded as a panegyric to free markets red in tooth and claw. Yet the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown is a fan and supports attempts to rescue Smith from co-option by 'neoliberal zealots'. He and Cox are old acquaintances. Brown, the actor tells me, would write to him from Downing Street complaining that people were always telling him to smile. So, I say, Laurence Olivier persuaded Mrs Thatcher to take elocution lessons, and Cox taught Brown to smile? 'No, I didn't tell him to smile,' he replies. 'I just said, 'Be yourself.'' For Cox these weeks in Dundee are a family reunion. In the theatre café where, as a diabetic, he is taking a somewhat urgent lunch, he recalls the day more than 60 years ago when he walked into the Rep ('not the same building, but the same ethos'). 'It's always difficult because it's so alien, you know, a working-class kid, virtually an orphan, to come into a situation like this. And that's why theatre is so important to me, because it's family. It really is family. And I've always found that it's family. Sometimes it's not a good family and sometimes it reflects what all families go through, but it's still family as far as I'm concerned.' On arriving that day he witnessed a fistfight between two actors, one of whom was Nicol Williamson, one of the greatest performers of his day. 'The air,' he writes in his delightful memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, 'was blue'. Seeing the young Cox's horror, the actor Gawn Grainger (Zoë Wanamaker's husband, who died only this May) assured him the pair 'were just a little overexcited after a night on the bevy'. I compare his nonchalance to last year when Cox was reported to Equity for losing his temper during rehearsals for a production of A Long Day's Journey Into Night. 'Nicol wouldn't have lasted two minutes today,' he says. 'It's this whole woke nonsense. You can't say boo to a goose. I mean, I just lost my temper and I said, 'I'm not losing my temper at you. I'm losing my temper at me. I'm the one who's having the problem, not you.'' • Brian Cox and his wife: 'We had four years that were pure hell' Cox, whom I have talked to several times over the past two decades, is a warm and generous interviewee and remarkably unlike Logan Roy. Nevertheless, I am reassured that he shares at least some of Roy's takes on wokery. He was certainly keeping them undercover when we talked three years ago alongside his younger and more progressive-minded wife, Nicole Ansari-Cox, whose play She/Her he was producing at the Edinburgh Fringe. She told me firmly that 'trans women are women', and her husband held his counsel. He says now he was being respectful to her work, on which she did 'a fantastic job', but he certainly does not see the trans issue as cut and dried. 'I mean, it's fine to say, 'Well, if you feel you're a boy, let's go down that route and see what that means without actually taking the ultimate step.' Or vice versa. Then you can find out. But at the moment they want to do it all too quickly. I think it creates a lot more problems. It certainly creates a lot more difficulties than it solves.' Ansari, a German actress whom he met in Hamburg while playing Lear and married in 2002, is his second wife — although you may have read she is his third. Wikipedia claims he was married for a year to Lilian Monroe-Carr between 1966 and 1967. 'That was my first mother-in-law!' he exclaims. His actual first wife was the actress Caroline Burt, who divorced him after 18 years in 1986. He was shocked, although in neither of his two memoirs does he paint himself as a devoted or faithful husband or an attentive father to their son and daughter. In contrast his two sons with Ansari have seen much more of their dad. When I first met him they were tiny and he admitted they were rather scared of him, 'this big white-haired figure'. When we spoke again in 2020, during lockdown, he gently complained that the teenagers slept all day, went 'crazy on their devices all night' and burnt popcorn at 3am. They are now in their twenties and over six foot, and he is experiencing parental nostalgia. 'I miss my boys when they were little. They were such a delight. I never felt it with my other family because I was probably too selfish and self-obsessed. But now I just miss them. I miss them terribly.' Cox barely had a paternal model to emulate. His father, a benevolent shopkeeper who lent money to needy customers, died of pancreatic cancer when he was eight. His mother, guilty for 'being on his case', subsequently suffered a series of breakdowns and Cox was largely brought up by his three sisters. 'The irony was that in many ways losing my parents empowered me in a way that I never realised. When you've lost your parents — and at that age — you're incredibly free. There's nobody telling you what to do or what to be or where to go. So the world is your oyster in a way that you didn't expect it to be your oyster. So you pursue that, which led me to the theatre.' • Brian Cox: 'I woke up stark naked holding half of my tooth' Early on he found a father figure in the actor Fulton MacKay (unjustly now mainly remembered for Ronnie Barker's sitcom Porridge), who warned him not to worry about being a star and concentrate on being a good actor. He tells me he is not sure he did want to be a star but it was sound advice anyway. Cox went on to play many of the great Shakespearean roles, including Lear and Titus Andronicus, and enjoyed later success in Hollywood, often portraying villains. Yet in his seventies, thanks to Succession, he did become a supernova of a star. Rare is the day someone does not ask him to tell them, in full Logan Roy, to 'f*** off'. My favourite Roy line comes in the last series when he discusses the chances of life after death: 'You can't know. But I've got my f***ing suspicions.' Cox long ago gave up on his family's Catholic faith but is not uninterested in the subject. 'My great fantasy now I'm in my late seventies is, 'How am I going to die?' I think, maybe I'll get run over, maybe I'll fall down stairs. A lot of people die by falling. So I'm constantly fantasising about my demise.' Believing he was written out a touch early, he has still not watched the seven Succession episodes that followed Logan's death in the final season. I recommend the Logan's funeral instalment in particular. 'I've seen bits of it. I did focus on Kieran [Culkin], who I was deeply fond of. That boy had been out of work such a long time before he did that.' And now he has won an Oscar for A Real Pain? 'For me it's the great success story of Succession that he's got his just rewards.' As for the wealth that late stardom has brought Cox, he is almost contemptuous of it. 'I haven't changed. I'm still the same and this attention to the detail of wealth freaks me out. I don't like talking about it. I get embarrassed. I've got so many clothes now. People just keep giving me clothes. I've got a stylist and all that bollocks. They were talking about how much I earn the other day and I just said, 'I don't want to know that, thank you very much. Please keep that information to yourself.' God almighty! Really? What a responsibility, living up to it apart from anything else.' • Read more theatre reviews, guides and interviews One thing wealth has brought is a separate London home for his wife, to add to the ones they share in Brooklyn and upstate New York. Partly to escape Trump's second term, they are based in Britain now, she in a three-bedroom flat, he nine minutes' walk away over Primrose Hill. He explains the arrangement as an extension of their separate bedrooms in their other homes (they 'visit' each other). 'But when I go to her flat I always feel I'm imposing. She said, 'Come, you've got to come over. Why don't you come?' I said, 'Well, it's a long walk …' Then I go and I'm fine. But I'm always a bit nervous when I go there.' After Logan's backstory was ret-conned to have him born in Dundee, the magnate revisits the city, but when driven to his family home he refuses to get out and look at it. Cox, in contrast, has been back to the cramped, bathless tenement flat he lived in as a child but he finds it painful to walk around Dundee now. 'Not because I don't love it, because I do love it. I find it painful to see the neglect. You see things like this theatre and think, 'Oh wow! Isn't this wonderful?' And the new V&A museum. But then they build that stupid building in front of the V&A!' (It houses Social Security Scotland.) Afterwards I make a trip to his childhood home a 20-minute walk from where we have been talking. It is a granite building with a view of the Tay and does not look uncared for. What surprises me as a southern Englander, however, is that you can buy a two-bedroom flat in the street for just £85,000. It is as Cox says: the wealth of the nation has not rearranged itself northwards for a very long time. And yet from this street, from a home in which three of his sisters shared one settee bed and he and his brother slept together in an alcove, there emerged this volcanic talent. Cox has come a long way, but Dundee deserves to have him back. Make It Happen is at the Dundee Rep Theatre, Jul 18-26, then at the Edinburgh International Festival, Aug 1-9,
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
The Scottish stage play casting Fred Goodwin in a new light
When the rise and fall of 'Fred The Shred,' the nickname Goodwin earned for his ruthless cost-cutting, is turned into one of the biggest Scottish stage shows of the year, he is expected be cast in a whole new light. Read more: The actor who will play the man who would become Britain's most notorious banking boss has suggested audiences will see a different side to Goodwin – and may even feel empathy for him. Sandy Grierson, who has spoken to a number of former RBS employees as part of his preparation for the National Theatre of Scotland play Make It Happen, said he had been keen to get past his reputation and 'find a way to like the guy.' Former RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin will be depicted in the new stage play Make It Happen. The show, by the leading British playwright James Graham, will see Brian Cox play the ghost of Adam Smith, the 18th century philosopher and 'father of modern economics," who returns to Edinburgh to haunt Goodwin at the height of the crisis crippling RBS. Grierson said the show – which will launch in Cox's home city of Dundee later this month before a run at the Edinburgh International Festival – would grapple with the question of how much blame for the collapse of RBS and the global financial crisis that unfolded in 2008 should 'sit on the shoulders' of Goodwin. Sandy Grierson will play Fred Goodwin on stage in Make It Happen. (Image: Mihaela Bodlovic) Elements of a Greek tragedy – including a chorus, which will feature reimagined pop anthems from the 2000s – will be deployed to recall the rapid expansion of RBS during Goodwin's tenure, when it acquired a string of other banks and cut costs to generate bigger profits. Grierson said Goodwin had been compared to Icarus, the character from Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun, during the making of the show, the first major cultural project to explore RBS's involvement in the global financial crash. Brian Cox and Sandy Grierson will play Adam Smith and Fred Goodwin in the forthcoming stage play Make It Happen. (Image: National Theatre of Scotland/David Vintiner) The actor said: 'He did get the closest to the sun. He got RBS to being the biggest bank in the world. I'm fairly confident that at that time it seemed like the best thing to do. 'Fred Goodwin didn't just do it in isolation. It was a time when everyone around the world was trying to get their bank bigger and bigger so they did not get bought over. You were either a big fish that did the eating or a wee fish that got eaten. Brian Cox and Sandy Grierson will appear in Make It Happen at Dundee Rep and the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. (Image: David Vintiner) 'I think the banks had got themselves into some sort of alchemy. They were in a constant circle of growth. 'The play has a momentum right from the beginning that doesn't stop until all the wheels come off.' The rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland under Fred Goodwin will be explored in the stage play Make It Happen. Graham, whose previous work has brought Margaret Thatcher, Dominic Cummings and Rupert Murdoch to the stage and screen, has suggested that Make It Happen would trace the links between the 2008 financial crisis and the modern-day economic landscape in Britain, as well as explore the working-class roots of Paisley-born Goodwin, the first member of his family to go to university. Key players in the handling of the 2008 financial crisis, including the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Chancellor, Alistair Darling, will be portrayed in Make It Happen, along with a mix of real-life and fictionalised RBS figures. Director Andrew Panton and actor Brian Cox during rehearsals for new National Theatre of Scotland play Make It Happen. (Image: Alastair More) As well as speaking to former RBS employees, Grierson has studied video footage of Goodwin and even walked around the grounds of the bank's vast headquarters complex at Gogarburn, which was built during his tenure. He told The Herald: 'Edinburgh is a small place. I have met people who were involved with RBS and have stories to tell. 'There were lots of stories about 'Fred the Shred' and all of that, but I've been quite keen to get under the surface of that. 'Regardless of the point of view of the audience, I felt I needed to find a way to like the guy. There are people out there who got on with him. He has got friends that still stand by him. 'I think you've got to absolutely take your hat off to his ability. He seems to have been so calm under pressure. It is remarkable. "There is a lot of things you can say about Fred Goodwin, but I think he was victimised to an extent. He put himself in the firing line. 'It seems really weird that he took his eye off the ball so badly. I have still not quite got my head around it. 'I don't think that it's a show that asks you to entirely sympathise with Fred Goodwin. That's not what we are doing. "There is a sort of Greek tragedy vein that runs through it. When you watch a Greek tragedy, you can sort of have empathy with a character without necessarily being on their side. 'Hopefully people will understand what we imagine was fuelling and firing Fred Goodwin.' Make It Happen was developed following discussions about separate ideas for new plays from Graham, Cox and Andrew Panton, the artistic director of Dundee Rep, where the show will launch on July 18. When Make It Happen was announced in January, Cox suggested that Adam Smith had been "constantly misquoted" and had had his writing "hijacked" by politicians like Margaret Thatcher. Grierson said: 'When I first read the play, I loved the idea of the haunting of Fred Goodwin the notion of re-examining Adam Smith, prising him away from the clutches of Margaret Thatcher and investigating him in a more intelligent context than he is often seen and how we imply that Fred Goodwin probably saw him. "Coming into this, I got quite fixated on the bits of footage of Fred Goodwin that do exist. "But I'm aware that I have to perform the play that James has written and the Fred Goodwin that he has written. 'We are dealing with someone who is very tight-lipped and contained emotionally. That is allowed to escape in a pressure cooker kind of way. "When Fred meets Adam, there is certainly scope for your own imagination to let loose a bit more. 'The scenes that James has written between Adam and Fred are great. Fred needs Adam. He can't let him go - he desperately tries to cling onto him.' Make It Happen is at Dundee Rep from July 18-26 and at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh from July 30-August 9
BBC News
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Writer James Graham welcomes 'beast of an actor' to latest play
Award-winning playwright and screenwriter James Graham has spoken of his delight that actor Brian Cox will star in his latest It Happen, which charts the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland, premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival in will play the ghost of Scottish economist Adam who lives in Pulborough, West Sussex, has previously had hits with Dear England and the stage version of Boys from the Blackstuff, which opens in Brighton on Tuesday. Graham said of Brian Cox: "He is a beast of an actor. I have admired him for years and years."People know him from television but he's a theatre actor at heart."You feel so presumptuous and at times you pinch yourself – the 11-year-old boy who was making up stories in his room gets to work with these Hollywood actors, these legends. "You feel incredibly lucky."Produced by the National Theatre of Scotland, the play will preview in Cox's home town Dundee before moving on to Edinburgh. The playwright said his passion for writing was fuelled by his mother who bought him a typewriter at the age of just said: "I loved writing stories and I was very lucky that my mother – rather than rolling her eyes and saying 'get a proper job', really encouraged me from a young age."Dear England, the story of Gareth Southgate and his England football redemption, picked up the Olivier Award for Best New Play in is set to go on tour from September, as well as becoming a BBC television series with Joseph Fiennes reprising his role as the former England manager. Meanwhile his adaptation of the 1980s television series Boys from the Blackstuff opens at the Brighton Theatre Royal on Tuesday."To work with Alan Bleasdale- someone I grew up watching on the sofa with my mum when I was eight or nine – to actually spend time in a room with him building this for the stage was one of the honours of my life to be honest," he said that living in Sussex helped to provide a peaceful base for his writing."I need the peace and quiet to be able to write and to hear my own thoughts and from the first time I arrived in West Sussex I just could not believe it – the beauty of it," he said."I got taken there by friends and just fell in love with it and just knew it was going to be a really inspiring place to live and work."
