Chris Wallace Disagrees With Star Brian Cox On Succession’s Murdoch Influence ‘As Someone Who Spent 18 Years Working At Fox’

Tommy ChristopherMar 17th, 2023, 10:16 am

CNN anchor Chris Wallace pushed back on Succession star Brian Cox about his show’s parallels to Rupert Murdoch’s empire, using his own experience at Fox News as a reference point.

On this week’s edition of HBO Max and CNN’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, Wallace interviewed Cox and actress Eva Longoria.

Cox is the star of the HBO drama that begins its fourth and final season next week, and has introduced Cox — who holds the distinction of having been first to portray Hannibal Lecter on film in Michael Mann’s Red Dragon adaptation Manhunter — to a new generation of viewers.

During their interview, Wallace pressed Cox on his objection to the Murdoch comparison, telling Cox “as someone who spent 18 years working at Fox, I’m gonna put up the scene which I think cuts a little close to the bone on that subject”:

WALLACE: I think it’s fair to say that most people think that that Logan Roy and the Roys are based on Rupert Murdoch and his family, which I know you reject.

COX: Yeah. I reject it entirely.

WALLACE: But as someone who spent 18 years working at Fox, I’m gonna put up the scene which I think cuts a little close to the bone on that subject.

COX: Okay

WALLACE: Take a look.

[[CLIP]]

WALLACE: You don’t hear any echoes of the Murdochs there?

COX: Well, there’s the echo of anybody who is in that position, a position where they’re running an empire. And the big difference between Murdoch and Logan is Logan created his empire. You know, Murdoch’s Empire was already in place. And he just took it forward.

WALLACE: You mean he inherited it from —

COX: He inherited it.

WALLACE: From his —

COX: Yeah.

WALLACE: From his father.

COX: Yeah. And I think that Logan is in many ways, saying these are my rules. And these are what I do. But there’s also, again, the mystery element is where is Logan coming from? And he’s actually coming from somewhere, I think, a place of profound disappointment, and profound disappointment in the human experiment. I think he feels very, very badly let down. It certainly if you you’re, throughout the whole show, we’ve seen scars on his back, we’ve seen all of the stuff that’s going on, it’s never, you know the genius of Jesse Armstrong and the writers is they don’t expose any of that they just, that’s a color that’s there. It’s for us to fill in those elements to actually create that in a world as it were. And that’s, I think, precisely what’s happening in that scene where his son says he’s evil, you know, Logan doesn’t think he’s evil. That’s a view. It’s not a condition that, you know, that’s, you know, and that and, of course, naturally, Kendall is going to say that because there’s an element of bias because he’s felt that he’s not being treated properly. But then Logan also recognizes what is nakedly ambitious about Kendall, and not particularly attractive.