Jeremy Strong Seems to Claps Back at Succession Costars Brian Cox and Kieran Culkin After Their Digs About His Acting

“Lately, people have felt a need to take shots at me or say disparaging things, which I don’t really think there’s any need for,” Strong said after his ‘Succession’ costars criticized his perspective on acting

By Charna Flam is a writer-reporter at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2023. Her work has previously appeared on Variety, The New York Post, and The Wrap.

Published on January 8, 2025 08:48PM EST

Succession stars Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong all continue to have differing approaches to acting — and continue to voice those differences. 

In a Jan. 7 interview with Deadline, Strong shed some light on his method acting process and how he was able to prepare for his role as Roy Cohn in the new film about President-elect Donald Trump, The Apprentice.

The 46-year-old actor — who played Kendall Roy, the son of Waystar Royco founder Logan Roy (Cox) on Succession — revealed his process of depicting real people is by getting to “absorb and learn everything and study them endlessly,” he said. “When I look at the kind of transformational work based on historical characters that I feel inspired by, from Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, or Phil Hoffman in Capote or what I witnessed Daniel Day-Lewis do in Lincoln, it’s about transcending impersonation and finding the essence in a deep, serious way.”

But as he continued, he seemingly hit back at his Succession costars, who have both recently criticized his approach to acting.

“Lately, people have felt a need to take shots at me or say disparaging things, which I don’t really think there’s any need for,” Strong said. “The way I approach things, my process. I feel we’re storytellers. I think about those performances I just mentioned. Those are actors telling story through character, which to me is the highest bar. That’s the holy grail for me, creating a character, which is sort of creating an instrument that’s never existed before… That’s the kind of acting that I love. And it does require a kind of, I don’t know, devil may care attitude towards what anybody might think of what you’re doing.”

The Emmy winner continued, “I brought that up just because it’s been on my mind, and I guess I feel like it’s connected to the movie in a certain way,” he said. “Because we’re living in Roy Cohn’s world now, one he prepared the ground for, planting these malignant seeds that have now borne terrible fruit. I think there’s this sort of Trumpism in our culture now where, and the media is partly responsible for it to be honest, where meanness travels.”

To Strong, “it’s anti-art and not worthy of the dignity of what we’re all trying to do,” he added. “I think about Roy, how delighted he would be with the muckraking and the stone throwing going on in our country right now.”

Weeks earlier, Culkin and Cox both referenced Strong’s approach to acting and explained why they disagree with it.

Culkin, 42, said during a Dec. 17 Variety “Actors on Actors” conversation with Colman Domingo that he “object[s] when actors call themselves ‘storytellers.'”

“I don’t really like that,” Culkin said, before he directly mentioned his onscreen brother. “Sorry, Jeremy.”

Strong reiterated to Deadline how his approach to acting seems to be intrinsic to his identity. At a recent screening of The Apprentice, hosted by Robert Downey Jr., Strong saw Al Pacino, who “used a Browning quote he wrote about in his book. ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for.’ I think that’s the whole criterion of doing anything. It should be outside your grasp,” Strong said.

Cox also spoke with The Guardian for a Dec. 7 article, saying he disagreed with Strong’s method of immersing himself in the characters he plays.

Although Cox, 78, said Strong “was wonderful to act with,” he noted, “He would be an even better actor if he just got rid of that, so there would be much more inclusiveness in what he did. It’s not good for the ensemble. It creates hostility. That’s the problem.”

Cox noted that he never directly spoke to his costar about his perspective, which Strong has often spoke publicly about on various talk show appearances and to various news outlets.

The screening prompted Strong to recall a moment when he was 12 years old in 1993 when he went to Los Angeles with his dad to audition for pilots.

“While we were there, the Academy Awards were happening, and I begged my dad to take me down there and watch from the bleachers. I just thought it was the most exciting thing in the world,” he said, noting that it was the year when Pacino was nominated for Scent Of A Woman and Downey Jr. was nominated for Chaplin.

“I slept overnight on the bleachers with my dad, and it was freezing cold. I don’t think I fell asleep at all because it was just indescribably exciting to be there. I remember watching these people who were larger than life to me, walk on the carpet,” he continued. “My poor dad shivering, because he gave me his jacket to keep me warm.”

“I feel it’s just crazy to me that I get to do this with my life and I don’t take any of it for granted. So that’s also part of why I want to give it so much,” he added. “I don’t know any other way of doing it. I want to give it everything.”

The recent comments aren’t the first time that Strong’s costars have criticized his approach to acting.

Cox previously spoke out about Strong’s approach to acting, telling Town & Country in February 2023, “It’s f—ing annoying. Don’t get me going on it.” At the time, he claimed that Strong often blurred the lines between knowing a character and becoming him, calling his costar “that guy [after a take]” who would “lose it” if “he feels if he went somewhere else.”

Cox then added, “Strong is talented. He’s f—ing gifted. When you’ve got the gift, celebrate the gift. Go back to your trailer and have a hit of marijuana, you know?”

In a 2021 New Yorker profile, Cox also expressed a level of concern for Strong’s commitment to Kendall Roy. “The result that Jeremy gets is always pretty tremendous,” he said. “I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare.“

In the same feature, Strong said, “To me, the stakes are life and death. … I take [Kendall] as seriously as I take my own life.”