’Succession’ Star Brian Cox Condemns ‘Woke’ Culture

Brian Cox attends the "Succession" premiere presented by HBO Max at Rigoletto in Stockholm on March 27, 2023. Michael Campanella/Getty Images

Veteran Scottish actor Brian Cox denounced “woke culture” and attributed millennials and the rise of social media to proliferating the wave of canceling and shaming those who don’t embrace their points of view.

The 77-year-old actor made the statements during a Tuesday appearance on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” where he talked about his career and pondered the harm done by purported online arbiters of societal standards. Mr. Cox was just nominated for another Emmy award for his role portraying Logan Roy in the popular HBO series “Succession.”

“I don’t think social media helps. It hinders, not helps,” Mr. Cox said when queried by Mr. Morgan about how the use of such platforms has affected the world at large. “I think it points out too readily inadequacies. And the whole woke, what we’ve talked about before, the whole woke culture is truly awful … and the shaming culture.”

“I don’t know where it comes from. Who are the arbiters of this shaming? And it’s very hard to pin them down, and, it turns out, it’s usually a bunch of millennials,” continued Mr. Cox.

“And who gave them the halos?” asked Mr. Morgan.

“I suppose in a way they’re probably saying, ‘Well you’ve all screwed it up so we may as well do something about it.’ But it’s from the wrong principle. It comes from the wrong place,” said Mr. Cox, who has previously expressed his views about the topic of cancel culture and did so with Mr. Morgan as well.

Cox Defends Celebrities Attacked by Cancel Culture

In May of 2022, he referred to celebrity cancel culture as “a kind of modern-day McCarthyism,” when celebs, in particular, are branded in Hollywood for certain beliefs, actions, or opinions.

“It is a kind of raid on people’s sensibilities in order to reduce them and make them … I don’t know, there is so much hypocrisy in the whole thing,” Mr. Cox told the talk show host.

“I am not religious but there is a thing in the Bible where it says, ‘Let he or she without sin cast the first stone’ and there seems to be a lot of casting of stones. And it is like a virus,” he added.

Mr. Cox has also been known to defend “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling as she’s come under fire for her support of biological women, saying she’s been treated unjustly and has a right to her opinion. Ms. Rowling has received an targeted for criticism from both the trans community and “Harry Potter” stars for her comments on the topic.

“I thought there was something deeply unjust about it. And I just felt that,” said Mr. Cox during the May 2022 TV show appearance. “It is happening time and time again.”

“It is not only the people who are canceled. It is also people like their families, like their children, like their parents,” he added, comparing cancel culture’s consequences to “an earthquake situation.”

Cox Stresses Importance of Leaving Book Content Alone

Cox has also previously publicly condemned the censorship of Roald Dahl’s novels, noting the danger in changing literature and the course of historical events.

“I really do believe they’re of their time and they should be left alone,” he said during a Radio Times interview in February 2023, of the author’s writings. “I mean Roald Dahl was a great satirist apart from anything else as a writer and his children’s work is full of kind of satirical edge and I think it’s disgraceful to be doing that and who are we? I mean the righteousness that we’ve come up with now.”

He again referred to the political repression and persecution known as McCarthyism during the late 1940s and 1950s.

“It’s a kind of form of McCarthyism actually—this woke culture which is about wanting to reinterpret everything and re-design and say ‘Oh that didn’t exist’. Well it did exist. We have to acknowledge our history. The one thing that we have to do—what is so important in any time of progression—is to examine where we are and how we’ve gotten to where we are. And we can not start rewriting works of literature because it suits our so-called moral code, which is furious and specious anyway,” he said.

Besides being nominated again for the satirical drama “Succession,” which aired its fourth and final season this year, Mr. Cox previously won an Emmy award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for 2001’s “Nuremberg.” In 2019, he won a Golden Globe for Best Actor-Television Series Drama for “Succession.”

While his film credits are vast including roles in 1995’s “Rob Roy” and “Braveheart” and 2002’s “Adaptation,” he’s also known for his various roles in the theater, for which he’s garnered numerous accolades.