Professor Brian Cox: ‘I had to swear a lot less to play Logan Roy in Succession’-Graeme Greene-Entertainment – Metro

Imagine a world where the professor played the patriarch of the Roy family… (Picture: BBC/Rex)

Brian Cox, the 56-year-old physicist who first found fame as the keyboard player in the chart-topping band D:ream, has gone stratospheric in his career as a popular space scientist, with TV shows including Universe, The Planets and Forces Of Nature.

With his latest BBC series Solar System now on iPlayer, he talks about music, Iceland’s similarity to one of Jupiter’s moons, and speculates on what life on Mars might look like if we ever find it…

With so many probes and telescopes up in space, is it an exciting time to be looking at our solar system?

Yes. There are 40-odd spacecraft active currently in the solar system. For me, the interesting search is the search for life, which we’re getting really serious about, especially on Mars. At best, there’ll be single-celled organisms – but, still, life beyond Earth.

Brian Cox says Iceland has volcanoes similar to one of Jupiter’s moons (Picture: BBC Studios/Zach Levi-Rodgers)

You often travel around the world for your TV shows. Are you ever tempted to suggest that, to make a key scientific point, you need to stay in five-star hotel in the Bahamas for a couple of weeks?

You’ve put your finger on one of the challenges of making any film about space, which is, ‘What do you point the camera at?’ If you don’t point the camera at anything, it’s all computer graphics. Long ago, we decided it would be relevant to go to places where the geology is similar. It really works in this Solar System series.

If you’re making a film about volcanoes on Io [one of Jupiter’s moons], you might as well go to Iceland or somewhere where there are a lot of volcanoes. The laws of nature and chemistry that govern the way things work here on Earth are the same laws that govern the way things work out there. There is a volcano we descend into in Iceland which looks like Io because it’s the same chemistry. I like that.

How long do you think it will be before humans set foot on Mars?

Do we really want to go to Mars? (Picture: SERGIO FLORES/AFP via Getty Images)

It’s a really good question. There is real optimism now, because we’ve got reusable spacecraft for the first time and reusable rockets, and SpaceX’s Starship is potentially a really capable piece of equipment. It is hard to go to Mars and it would take a long time, but I think for the first time we have the ability to do it. It comes down to the will to do it now. I don’t think the question any more is, ‘Can we go to Mars?’, it is, ‘Do we want to and when do we want to?’

Would you like to go to Mars?

I’d love to see the Earth from space. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a lot of astronauts, and they’re unanimous that it changes their perspective massively – that it’s a tremendously powerful thing to see.
I would not like to go to Mars because ‘the right stuff’ doesn’t even begin to explain what you need in order to embark on such a voyage. I’m not that person.

You don’t think you’re tough enough?

NASA’s Apollo 8 command module pilot James Lovell, lunar module pilot William Anders, and Commander Frank Borman (Picture: NASA/Interim Archives/Getty Images)

To sit in a spacecraft for two years, to go off to somewhere where you land and there’s nothing but dust everywhere? Pretty though it may be, that’s not the way I’m constructed.

I’ve met several Apollo astronauts, and they’re test pilots. It’s a mentality.
I interviewed American astronaut Jim Lovell. He said to me that the skill as a test pilot is to very quickly be able to make the list of the things that are going to kill you, in order, and then to go through that list. If you get the list right, you’re more likely to survive. If you get the list wrong, you’re less likely to survive.

You joined your old band D:Ream on stage at Glastonbury this year. Did you enjoy that?

One of the perks of being a musician and famous scientist is you get to play with your idols (Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

I loved it. I forgot how much fun it is playing live with other musicians. It was brilliant. I do it occasionally and it’s always, always great fun. We do a charity show [Christmas Compendium] almost every year at the Royal Albert Hall, which is a charity, science and ideas show. We always have a band and I usually play with the band. We had OMD a couple of years ago, because they were one of my favourite bands growing up and they still are. I’ve played Love Cats with The Cure. I played a song with New Order. They tend to be bands I grew up with that I ask to come and play the charity show, and then I say, ‘Oh, by the way,
I would like to play’. They usually say, ‘Yeh’.

You were brilliant as Logan Roy in Succession. How did you transform yourself into a much older, larger Scottish man?

My answer to that is I had to become less sweary than I actually am to play the role of Logan Roy.

You’d be surprised how hard it is to tell them apart… (Photo by Pablo Cuadra/Getty Images)

How often do you get mistaken for the actor Brian Cox, who really played Logan Roy in Succession?

I have met Brian a few times. We occasionally play on that for fun. I do get confused in the world of social media.
I occasionally see a strange pile-on on Twitter, or whatever it’s called now, to say, ‘Why don’t you just keep your nose out of Scottish politics?’ I say, ‘I can see what’s happened here.’ It does happen. It probably happens to him as well.

Brian Cox’s new five-part series, Solar System, is on BBC iPlayer

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