I wish every celebrity were as gloriously unfiltered and rude as Brian Cox.
Hollywood would be a lot more exciting instead of the navel-gazing snoozefest it’s become.
In interviews, the vicious “Succession” star goes to town cruelly slagging off co-workers, other actors and directors. Anybody really. Without fail, the 79-year-old speaks his combative, brutal mind.
It’s pass-the-popcorn entertaining.
For instance, this week, he told The Times of London that Margot Robbie is “too beautiful” for the role of Cathy in “Wuthering Heights” and mocked her Australian accent. Why? Why not?!
He went on to say that Quentin Tarantino is a bad director of actors: “What you see is all Quentin Tarantino.” Who cares that it’s been seven years since Tarantino last directed a movie? Brian’s furious!
In the past, Cox has targeted Johnny Depp, Ian McKellen and even his “Succession” co-star Jeremy Strong’s method acting.
Some might call him mean. I call him terrific fun.
Because actors, by and large, are now exceedingly vanilla and robotic in public. Phony. Vacuous. Boring. I’m often asked if the best part of my job is speaking to stars. Nope. I actually rank my office’s free air conditioning way above that.
Interviewing celebs is a chore, actually. Bold-facers rarely say anything interesting anymore because they live in constant fear of stepping out of bounds or being canceled. Getting them off-script is akin to the surgical extraction of molars.
The Hollywood press machine has turned into a forced exercise of empty-headed bullet points and repeated sterile anecotes.
You know the drill. Actors appear on dusty old talk shows, giggle about how much fun it was working with Matthew McConaughey, do a dumb skit and roll the clip.
More and more, they go on podcasts hosted by other entertainers and friends who make them sound funny, ask gentle questions about their childhood and, crucially, allow slip-ups to be edited out later.
They are media trained to within an inch of their life and more protected than presidents in a war zone.
Big mouths used to be essential to showbiz. Most notoriously, Bette Davis went on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” to rail against Joan Crawford for scheming her out of an Oscar for “What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?”
Joan Rivers made a meal out of ruthlessly mocking the birdbrained famous. Elizabeth Taylor was a favorite target.
Jay Leno, for all his faults, memorably got Hugh Grant to open up about getting caught with a hooker and being arrested in 1995 by asking “What the hell were you thinking?”
These days, a subject so dramatic would be a no-go zone.
Broadway’s just as buttoned up with rare, fabulous exceptions.
There was 2018, when Dame Diana Rigg privately complained that her “My Fair Lady” co-star Lauren Ambrose was taking Sundays off. She then doubled down to The Post.
“I’m flying the old flag for a generation of actors who performed even when they were at death’s door,” she said.
Another gift arrived last year when Patti LuPone was ripped apart for appearing dismissive of Audra McDonald’s performance as Mama Rose in “Gypsy” and saying she’s “not a friend” during a delicious New Yorker interview.
But most of today’s younger performers would be terrified to utter anything close. More often than not, their reps demand that journalists not go near topics readers and viewers are actually interested in — i.e. their lives and thoughts.
And yet there’s a hunger for honesty.
The week of the Oscars, what was much of America talking about? Certainly not the eventual Best Picture winner “One Battle After Another.”
Everybody was fixated on Timothée Chalamet’s off-the-cuff diss of opera and ballet during an onstage event. Who didn’t have a Timmy take? The owner of my gym had a take.
He didn’t go on an obnoxious political soapbox — that’s one thing the rich and famous are more than happy to do — but the comments still generated a widespread conversation about art. That never happens. I can’t remember the last time a film actor said something that caused such a stir. Well, other than Will Smith shouting, “Get my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth!”
More stars should follow the blunt lead of Cox: “F—k it! I’m gonna say what I want to say.”