Scottish actor Brian Cox took a swipe at the media during an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, saying “half the journalists don’t know what the f*** they’re talking about most of the time.”
The actor was being interviewed alongside Patricia Clarkson, with whom he is starring in a production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre.
Cox was responding to comments from playwright Jeremy O Harris, the writer of Slave Play, who said that the theatre industry was overly reliant on casting celebrities.
Harris had argued that celebrity casting “takes away from great theatre because people treat it like a Disney World attraction, where the play is background to the amusement of seeing their favourite celebrity in front of them.”
Cox – who is currently best-known for appearing in HBO hit Succession, but is also a classically trained actor with BAFTAs, Golden Globes and Olivier Awards filling his trophy cabinet – dismissed the comments, countering that celebrity is something earned by hard work: “Celebrity – what does that mean? They are hardworking actors who’ve earned the celebrity through what they’ve done. I’ve been doing this for 60 years for God’s sake.”
Not mincing his words, Cox added: “Half the journalists don’t know what the f*** they’re talking about most of the time quite frankly, they really don’t. They just … they make it up, you know, it’s like easy copy.”
