How do you follow one of the biggest, most critically acclaimed roles on TV? For 77-year-old Brian Cox<\/a>, fresh off the final series of Sky Atlantic\u2019s drama Succession<\/a>, the answer was simple \u2013 do something completely different.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very hard when you go from a show like Succession and try to work out what you\u2019re going to do next,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m always up for a new adventure. That\u2019s how you keep young when you get to my age.\u201d<\/p>\n Though, arguably, he\u2019s not left the sharp suits and Rolexes of Logan Roy too far behind \u2013 because when I visit the set of Cox\u2019s new show, I\u2019m assailed by glitz, glamour and luxury from the moment I enter.<\/p>\n In a beautiful beach-fronted Jamaican villa, a casino is in full swing. As the waves lap at the edge of a private bay, guests resplendent in tuxedos and cocktail dresses have gathered to play roulette and craps.<\/p>\n There are nods to the James Bond movies<\/a>: a metal briefcase on a table, vodka martinis, an iguana sitting on a guest\u2019s shoulder (a reference to villain Franz Sanchez\u2019s pet in A Licence to Kill). Even the croupier is a familiar face \u2013 he faced off with Daniel Craig<\/a> in 2006\u2019s Casino Royale.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve not entered some kind of MI6-themed fugue state \u2013 I\u2019m on set for 007: Road to a Million<\/a>, a Bond-themed reality show that sees contestants competing for a massive prize pot. Not that it\u2019s being marketed as \u201ca reality show\u201d \u2013 nor does it look like any reality show seen on the small screen before.<\/p>\n Road to a Million is a joint venture between three unlikely bedfellows: streaming service Amazon Prime Video<\/a>, production company 72 Films (best known for documentaries such as All or Nothing and 9\/11: One Day in America) and Eon, the producers of the James Bond movies, who have never before allowed their franchise to be used on TV.<\/p>\n The premise is simple: nine pairs of contestants are sent around the world searching for a silver briefcase containing a quiz question.<\/p>\n Often the search involves dramatic stunts \u2013 such as swinging from cable cars in Rio de Janeiro \u00e0 la Moonraker \u2013 and each correct answer earns an ever-increasing pot of money, with a \u00a31 million cash prize for any pair that makes it to the end. That means an eye-watering \u00a39 million pot is potentially available if they all make it through.<\/p>\n At the heart of it all is a shadowy puppet master called \u201cthe Controller\u201d, who sets questions and watches from his lair: inspired by classic Bond villains such as Blofeld, and played by Cox.<\/p>\n \u201cNow I can finally say I\u2019ve been in a Bond production!\u201d Cox says. \u201cI always thought I\u2019d be a very good villain, but nobody\u2019s ever offered. Having played one of the most misunderstood men in television history [in Succession], it was a no-brainer to be a Bond villain of sorts.\u201d<\/p>\n Few would have put money on the plain-speaking, classically trained Scottish thesp starring in a reality show, but Cox says he was looking for \u201ca bit of fun\u201d after an intense five years inhabiting the almost-permanently furious billionaire mogul, Logan Roy.<\/p>\n The role allows him to once again flex the skills he showed in Succession: the Controller is stern but cerebral and witty, and enjoys toying with the contestants, not unlike the way Logan Roy played his children off against each other as they squabbled over who would take over the running of his media empire.<\/p>\n \u201cI was probably one of the first to know that [Succession] was going to finish, and I thought, \u2018They\u2019re killing me off, so what do I do next?’\u201d he says. \u201cAs you get older, life becomes increasingly ridiculous, so you either laugh or you cry, and I prefer the laughter. And I really enjoyed it. I don\u2019t know if \u00a0\u2018risk\u2019 is the right word, but certainly it\u2019s unusual territory for me. I thought it could be funny.<\/p>\n \u201cYou keep it bouncy and you keep the variety, rather than thinking, \u2018I must go off and do something heavy now.\u2019 I couldn\u2019t do 50 years of Poirot or whatever. It\u2019s fantastic but [David Suchet] did it over a very long period of time. I couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, this isn\u2019t Cox\u2019s first spy game. He may never have been a Bond villain, but from 2002 he did play CIA boss Ward Abbott in the Bourne trilogy<\/a>, which is widely credited with reviving the espionage genre that was, at the time, in danger of looking a bit pass\u00e9.<\/p>\n And Cox agrees with many critics at the time who thought that Matt Damon<\/a>\u2018s Jason Bourne may have inspired Daniel Craig\u2019s Bond, who appeared four years later as a tougher, darker 007.<\/p>\n \u201c[The Bourne Identity] was a bit more modern,\u201d he says. \u201cThen Dan inhabited Bond brilliantly. But lately I\u2019ve been looking back at the Bond films from the \u201960s onwards, which has been wonderful. They have a style that was really endearing and mapped a particular period of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Cox praises the third Bond star, Roger Moore<\/a>, as being one of his favourites, calling him \u201cwitty\u201d. Yet the older Bond films face accusations of not being politically correct. Does Cox think it\u2019s fine to still show them, even if they contain language and attitudes we wouldn\u2019t use today?<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I think that\u2019s OK,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause the only way we can understand who we are is by acknowledging our history.<\/p>\n \u201cLook what\u2019s happening in the world today: if we had a real sense of who we are, we wouldn\u2019t have had the idiotic clown from Eton [Boris Johnson] or the Pink Pinocchio [Donald Trump] or Borsch and Tears [Vladimir Putin].<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have disclaimers now on some older programming, which is fine, but at the same time, it\u2019s a wonderful tradition that we try to carry on. We don\u2019t muck around with Shakespeare; we shouldn\u2019t muck around with James Bond.\u201d<\/p>\n These days, the lines between big and small screen have blurred. With movie-size budgets available on streaming services, we increasingly see film stars and studios heading to TV, whether that\u2019s Hollywood big-hitters Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Harrison Ford joining streaming shows, or Disney transferring their Star Wars<\/a> and Marvel<\/a> superheroes to television.<\/p>\n But this is the first time a multi-million pound global franchise like Bond has dipped its toes into reality TV \u2013 and Eon agreed partly because the show is visually spectacular, filmed on the sweeping cinematic scale Bond is known for.<\/p>\n According to Bond producer and 007: Road to a Million executive producer Gregg Wilson, it was important to strike a balance between having a Bond theme \u2013 including certain Bond props as little \u201cEaster eggs\u201d for fans, for example, and filming at real Bond locations \u2013 but not muddying the waters by including characters like Bond himself, M or Q.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be breaking through the fourth wall to have characters from the movie franchise,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cOur contestants are real people, and if they interacted with people from a fictional world, it would feel strange.<\/p>\n \u201cSo it all takes place in the real world, but there\u2019s this Bond villain puppet master who is dangling prize money in front of these contestants in very outlandish ways. Brian has really elevated it to the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n Those \u201creal people\u201d contestants rubbing shoulders in Jamaica with the glamorous casino clientele include two cockney brothers, emergency care nurses and a couple who\u2019ve rarely been abroad, having had three children soon after getting married.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the ideas that have been proposed to us over the years have been people trying to be James Bond,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cWhen we shoot our films with elaborate action sequences, it\u2019s complicated, and it\u2019s difficult to do that at a reduced budget in order to do it safely.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a very low appetite for risk, despite our films appearing to be the opposite. So it was refreshing to have a proposal that was more about falling in love with these contestants.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll get sucked in because it\u2019s Bond and it\u2019s exciting and there\u2019s great sums of money involved, but the thing you\u2019ll fall in love with are these real-life people.\u201d<\/p>\n Bond\u2019s series producer Barbara Broccoli agrees. \u201cFor me, the most joy has been watching the emotional rollercoaster of their journeys.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very moved getting to know the contestants and was in awe of their bravery in confronting some of their deepest fears.\u201d<\/p>\n So, has Cox been bitten by the reality bug: might we see him make a more permanent move to entertainment now? Will he take over from Claudia Winkleman<\/a> in The Traitors, or show us his paso doble on Strictly?<\/p>\n Unlikely. He\u2019s currently playing Bach in The Score at the Theatre Royal Bath, which ends its run this Saturday. He says it contains a nightmarish number of lines.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to see if I still had any theatre chops. The last time I did a play [The Great Society in 2019], they played a dirty trick. It was going to be a dramatised reading, which meant that I didn\u2019t have to learn any lines.<\/p>\n \u201cBut after the first week of rehearsals, they said, \u2018It\u2019s going so well we\u2019ve decided to do a full production,\u2019 and I said, \u2018I\u2019m never going to know the whole thing in two weeks, forget it!\u2019 So they gave me an ear-piece and a lovely guy fed me the lines.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a bit of a cheat. As you get older, you might need assistance in certain ways, but I\u2019m trying to still do it without any help.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, whatever comes next, and even if Road to a Million is a massive hit, Cox has made peace with one hard-to-deny fact: he\u2019ll probably be remembered chiefly as Succession\u2019s Logan Roy for the rest of his career.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I left the show [at the start of the final season], people were writing to say, \u2018We\u2019re not going to watch any more,\u2019 and I\u2019d think, \u2018Well, it\u2019s called Succession \u2013 this is the succession bit you\u2019ve been waiting for, for four seasons, so you should stick with it now!’\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot that I\u2019m ungrateful,\u201d Cox adds. \u201cLogan was one of the greatest roles ever \u2013 and it just got greater and greater.\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for more to watch, check out our <\/strong>TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only \u00a310 \u2013 subscribe now<\/a> and celebrate the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who with a special issue of Radio Times. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n He talks all things to do with Prime Video’s new reality series. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":38796,"template":"","categories":[1,5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/10\/brian-cox-on-007-road-to-a-million-james-bond-and-life-after-succession-scaled.jpg",2560,1707,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/10\/brian-cox-on-007-road-to-a-million-james-bond-and-life-after-succession-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/10\/brian-cox-on-007-road-to-a-million-james-bond-and-life-after-succession-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/10\/brian-cox-on-007-road-to-a-million-james-bond-and-life-after-succession-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/10\/brian-cox-on-007-road-to-a-million-james-bond-and-life-after-succession-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/10\/brian-cox-on-007-road-to-a-million-james-bond-and-life-after-succession-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/10\/brian-cox-on-007-road-to-a-million-james-bond-and-life-after-succession-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"He talks all things to do with Prime Video's new reality series.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/38795"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/10\/0201SuccessionS04-c629e6e.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Brian")
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