Rupert Murdoch has been watching too much 'Succession,' Brian Cox — the actor who played Logan Roy — joked as he weighed in on the media tycoon stepping down

• Brian Cox spoke with the BBC about his thoughts on Rupert Murdoch stepping back from chair of News Corp.
• Cox recounted how Murdoch's son-in-law once asked if the "Succession" writers could "be a bit nicer."
• Cox, who played a character inspired by Murdoch, criticized the tycoon's ability to "manipulate" politics.

Brian Cox, who played the Rupert Murdoch-esque CEO of a media conglomerate in "Succession," criticized the former News Corp chair in an interview with the BBC on Sunday.

Murdoch announced last Thursday he was stepping down from running Fox and News Corp, and handing the reins to his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch.

Four months before that was the "Succession" finale, in which the patriarch's eldest son and presumed heir didn't enjoy the same transition.

"I think he's been watching too much 'Succession,' clearly," Cox joked of Murdoch's decision, in the BBC interview.

"You can't predict these things, but the fact that he chose one son over the other, it's quite funny really," he added.

The Scottish actor also referenced reports that Murdoch's divorce settlement banned his fourth wife, Jerry Hall, from giving story ideas to the 'Succession' writers.

And Cox recounted a time where the husband of Elisabeth Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's daughter, approached him in a coffee shop, to say it was an "interesting series," and added: "Do you think maybe the writers could be a bit nicer to us next season?"

The 77-year-old actor also took aim at Murdoch's statement, which said: "The battle for the freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom of thought, has never been more intense."

"Freedom for what? Freedom to impose his ideas on other people, freedom to kind of manipulate certain things in certain directions? I mean, he's certainly done a lot of that in his life," Cox told the BBC.

In the UK, prime ministers like Tony Blair and David Cameron have come under criticism for frequent meetings with the media boss. The Daily Telegraph reported earlier this month that current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was persuaded by News Corp executives not to resign after he was fined for breaching COVID lockdown rules as chancellor.

"He's probably the most tenacious human on God's earth," Cox said of Murdoch. "He's just kept on going but I think eventually there comes a point when he has to stop, and it had to happen, and it's happened."

News Corp did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.