Jeremy Strong Is Sick of Former Co-Stars Taking Shots at Him

Jeremy Strong has opened up about how he feels about his Succession co-stars taking digs at his method acting.

“Lately, people have felt a need to take shots at me or say disparaging things, which I don’t really think there’s any need for,” Strong said in an interview with Deadline Tuesday.

On the heels of two biopic roles—he starred as Donald Trump’s lawyer Roy Cohn in The Apprentice and as Bruce Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau in Deliver Me From Nowhere—Strong discussed how he controversially immerses himself in his characters.

“For me, and the way I work, there is a kind of emptying out of yourself, so that ideally you can be a pure vessel to the writing and whatever arises in the moment,” Strong said. “This sounds so highfalutin, but whatever.”

Though he didn’t mention them by name, two of Strong’s biggest critics are his former Succession co-stars, Brian Cox and Kieran Culkin. Both have spoken out many times about their dislike of Strong’s very serious approach to acting.

“It’s f---ing annoying. Don’t get me going on it,” Cox told Town & Country in 2023.

Culkin said on Variety’s Actors on Actors on Dec. 17 that he “object[s] when actors call themselves ‘storytellers.’”

“I don’t really like that,” Culkin said, before calling Strong out directly. “Sorry, Jeremy.”

In a Dec. 7 profile with The Guardian, Cox added that there is “no argument with Jeremy’s acting,” but he did think he should do away with the method acting.

“He would be an even better actor if he just got rid of that, so there would be much more inclusiveness in what he did,” Cox said. “It’s not good for the ensemble. It creates hostility. That’s the problem.”

Strong played Kendall Roy on Succession, while Cox took on the role of his television father, Logan Roy, and Culkin played his brother, Roman Roy.

Strong shared an anecdote of seeing Al Pacino and Robert Downey Jr. at a screening, which made him appreciate how far he’s come as an actor. He recalled sleeping on the bleachers outside of the Academy Awards, where Pacino and Downey were nominated, in between auditions as a child.

“So that’s also part of why I want to give it so much. I don’t know any other way of doing it,“ Strong said. ”I want to give it everything.”