The actor's wife appeared as one of Logan Roy's ex-mistresses.
During the penultimate episode of Succession season 4, Brian Cox's wife had an unexpected cameo. Nicole Ansari-Cox made her HBO debut as one of Logan Roy's ex-mistresses, who all had gathered for his long-awaited spectacle of a funeral.
In a darkly funny moment, Ansari-Cox appeared as Sally-Ann, whom Lady Caroline (Harriet Walter) dubbed as her own "Kerry, so to speak." She was then asked by Caroline to join her, Marcia Roy (Hiam Abbass) and, of course, Kerry Castellabate (Zoe Winters) in the front row during the church service for the late Waystar Royco media mogul.
As they all sat together, one of them quipped, "God, Logan would have hated this," resulting in a collective laugh that broke through all their grief.
Unsurprisingly, the internet ate up the brief interaction between all four women, with several fans taking to Twitter to share their excitement -- and love for seeing Cox's actual real wife show up on the series.
In an interview with Vulture, Walter explained why Caroline made the gesture and gathered all the exes together during the funeral. "I think she’s feeling vulnerable and feeling a very big mixture of feelings," the actress said.
"And she looks around this room and she spots Sally-Ann and she spots Kerry. She’s got to face up to Marcia," she continued. "So she suddenly feels, there’s only four of us in this whole congregation who know what it’s like. Maybe I can reach out to these people. It makes her richer, that she can extend her imagination to those people rather than always taking the bitchy move. I just think it’s more interesting."
Walter added," There's a certain sort of female solidarity about it as well. The French have a saying, cherchez la femme, which means in any sort of emotional mess up, look for the woman, it’ll be her fault. Well, my reaction is cherchez l’homme. Look for the guy. It’s Logan who messed up all these people. He had the power and he used it. Yet we’ve all had our time when we’ve loved him."
Ansari-Cox's cameo, meanwhile, comes after her husband revealed that he appeared outside the church, where the episode was filmed on location in New York City to throw paparazzi off the scent of spoiling Logan's death during filming of the final season.
"On my funeral day, they were going to do a scene with me, a fake scene with me at the church, so, just to throw people off the scent," Cox told Deadline at the time.
Despite having a plan in place to shoot a fake scene, the actor said that "it was very difficult" filming inside the church and the production team decided that "the one thing they didn't need to do was have a fake scene with Logan Roy that wouldn't even be in the show."
However, Cox was already on his way to set when he found out the change in plans. And in a move very similar to one Logan would pull, he decided to show up at the church anyway. "I said, 'I'm coming in.' They said, 'Yeah, but we're not doing the scene.' I said, 'Look, I'm coming in because I know there's going to be a whole lot of paparazzi there, and they're going to be wondering what that funeral is,'" Cox recalled.
"If I hadn’t done that, if I hadn’t come, they would’ve gone, it’s Logan’s funeral," the actor explained. "And I was the one who took that responsibility. They didn’t even think of it. They were so rushed, and so much, you know, this last season was very difficult to film."
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