Logan Roy Logan has that Citizen Kane mystery Brian Cox
Jesse Armstrong runs a writing room full of writers who are constantly finessing the script. And he also lets the actors try the lines in a variety of ways. As someone who’s done a lot of stage work, does that way of working appeal to you? “Oh, I love the way Jesse works. He’s unique. He worries if it’s too perfect! He doesn’t like perfec- tion; he wants to mess it up! He’s just fantastic. And everything is always surprising. And it’s so human – he really does understand, and he doesn’t judge the characters. It’s so easy to take this show and judge everything, but he never does. It’s always going in the route that you never expect.” You have a very active film career, too. What is it about this show, and this char- acter, that makes you want to return, and to devote so much of your working life to it? “For me the appeal of Logan is his mystery. We don’t know who he is. I’m still discovering who he is. It goes back to episode nine of the first series, they suddenly decided he was born in Dundee hav- ing said he was born in Quebec! I said: ‘What the hell’s going on? I’ve been playing this guy from Que- bec for the last eight episodes and suddenly I’m a Dundonian!’ And Jesse said ‘Oh, you left very ear- ly, it’s OK, before the War, they took you away to Canada when you were a kid!’ But it was a bit of a shock. And that’s what’s really been interesting for me. Because I’m a Dundonian, We were the people that lived in the land that time forgot for so long.” So, having this deep-seated understand- ing of Logan’s background, what he’s been through, and of his mettle, helps you do the world-building of his character? “Absolutely. The Dundonian thing helped, al- though it confused me a little bit as I had to match my background against his. He had a much more bitter experience than mine – mine wasn’t too won- derful. I’ve written a memoir about my home and history… But Logan came up on a rack in some kind of way. He’s a very disappointed man. And in a way he’s got that Citizen Kane mystery about him. And that’s what you have to keep intact: Logan’s mystery. I’m too much of a blabbermouth, that’s my problem!” Where do we find Logan in series three? “There’s a new challenge. There’s this usurping son who’s trying to prove himself and Logan knows the boy is in for a bruising, just because he’s such a complicated lad, young Kendall. And he’s such a lone- ly boy. There’s nothing Logan can do about that. But he loves him. The thing I asked Jesse right from the word go is: ‘Does he love his children?’ And he said: ‘He absolutely loves his children.’ So once you’ve es- tablished that, how much his children mean to him, and how disappointing it all becomes, that’s fod- der for the whole show: at root, we never see it, he
mladi Kendal komplikovan momak, usamljeni dečak. Ipak, otac ne može ništa da uradi povodom toga. Ali on ga voli. Džesija sam pitao od samog početka: „Da li Logan voli svoju decu?“, a on je rekao: „Da, on ap- solutno voli svoju decu.“ Dakle, kada ste to ustano- vili, koliko mu deca znače i kako razočaravajuce sve postaje, to je hrana za celu priču: u osnovi, mi to ni- kada ne vidimo, on to ne izražava, ali ih voli. Ne biste rekli da je bilo ko od ovih ljudi ve-
Series » Serija | 19
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