Donald Trump would be almost impossible to play, says Golden Globe winning actor Brian Cox.
The Dundee-born actor, who has found success as the media mogul Logan Roy in American drama Succession, has played a number controversial characters over the years from Hannibal Lecter in the 1986 film Manhunt to Hermann Goring in television drama Nuremberg.
However, he admits that President Donald Trump could be a difficult one to pull off.
Speaking in the latest Great Scot podcast, a series led by broadcaster Janice Forsyth for The Big Light, Cox, 74, said: “The only person who I would say would be impossible to play would be Donald Trump because Donald Trump is an extremely bad script - you can’t do anything with it.”
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On the forthcoming US elections, he said: “You realise how can they believe this man. He so lacks credibility. And everybody is a liar, it is just more delusional. [Joe] Biden is good soul and he represents stability. I think he is going to have a real team behind the Democratic surge. One has hope. I am quietly hopeful that we will sort it out because there is enough sensible people out there, but there is a hinterland which is very worrying.”
Playing Logan Roy in Succession has brought Cox critical acclaim and he says he is a character great mystery.
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Cox added: “What is he, where does he come from? That was the thing that from outfield they whacked me with because when I started the show and I did the first pilot, I [Roy] was born in Quebec, in Canada and that was my history.
“And later in the series my birth place was changed. My co-star Peter Fieldman told me I was now from somewhere called Dundee, Scotland. And I said ‘what, that’s where I am from it was a hell of a surprise. For nine episodes I was playing him this way, and the show said it was ok as you left very early and then you came back.
“So Logan has become my evil twin in a way, so doing that just enhanced the mystery of the man, of who he is and how he gets to where he is and what he feels about his children and what his children mean to them. I asked does he like his children and was told no he loves his children and once you know that then so much falls in place.”
Brian Cox’s Scottish favourites
- Favourite place: The view from Kinnoull Hill, Perthshire - it is the best view in Scotland
- Favourite Scottish book: Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
- Favourite Scottish word: Glaikit
- Favourite roll filling: Black pudding
- All time Scottish favourite food: Onion bridies
- Favourite saying: Whit’s fur ye’ll, no go by ye, as his mother used to say
To hear the podcast in full go to www.thebiglight.com/greatscot
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