Brian Cox has revealed that he was offered roles in both Game of Thrones and Pirates of the Caribbean, but he turned them down.
"I’m often asked if I was offered a role in Game of Thrones – reason being that every other bugger was – and the answer is, yes, I was supposed to be a king called Robert Baratheon, who apparently died when he was gored by a boar in the first season," Cox said in his recently published memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat (via GQ). "I know very little about Game of Thrones so I can’t tell you whether or not he was an important character, and I’m not going to google it just in case he was, because I turned it down.
"Why? Well, Game of Thrones went on to be a huge success and everybody involved earned an absolute fortune, of course. But when it was originally offered the money was not all that great, shall we say. Plus I was going to be killed off fairly early on, so I wouldn’t have had any of the benefits of the long-term effects of a successful series where your wages go up with each passing season. So I passed on it, and Mark Addy was gored by the boar instead. (I lied. I did google it.)"
Cox's most recent high-profile role has been in another HBO series – he plays patriarch and media conglomerate boss Logan Roy in Succession. Season 3 aired at the end of last year and he's been nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance at this year's awards ceremony.
As for big screen roles, Cox's memoir also mentions that he refused a role in Pirates of the Caribbean. "I turned my nose up at the part of the Governor in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, a role that was eventually played by Jonathan Pryce," he added. "The guy who directed Pirates was Gore Verbinski, with whom I made The Ring, and he’s a lovely chap but I think I blotted my copybook by turning down the Governor. It would have been a money-spinner, but of all the parts in that film it was the most thankless, plus I would have ended up doing it for film after film and missed out on all the other nice things I’ve done."
Cox's next big-screen role will be in the political thriller The Independent alongside Jodie Turner-Smith, John Cena, and Ann Dowd, which is set to release later this year. In the meantime, check out our list of the other upcoming movies to get excited about in 2022.
