During their appearance on Variety’s Actors on Actors series, ‘Succession’s Brian Cox and ‘The English’s Emily Blunt discussed their approach to acting and shared some career highlights. While the two were talking about 2006’s ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’ Cox named the actress that he envied a lot.
‘The Devil Wears Prada’ saw Blunt play Emily Charlton, who was the co-assistant of fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly, who was played by Meryl Streep. When talking about the film and Streep, Cox admitted:
“I loved it. To work with one of the greatest screen actresses of all time, I mean, I so envy you.”
The actor then recalled meeting with Streep and confessing he was jealous of her:
“I met her once, and I used to say, ‘I never liked you.’ And she went, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I never liked you because I was jealous.’ … How can anybody be that good?”
Blunt then chimed in, revealing Streep tried method acting for her role in the film and felt miserable. Upon hearing this, Cox revealed his thoughts on method acting, saying:
“There’s this whole debate about method acting. I’m all for whatever gets you through the day, fine. But the great thing … is how you transmit energy — the fact [that] the energy goes through you, and you don’t have to worry in any way. And if you hit it right, it works.”
Cox is known for his distaste for method acting. In a previous interview with Town & Country, he said that his ‘Succession’ co-star Jeremy Strong’s method acting was ‘f*cking annoying.’ After his remark went viral, Cox shared a parody clip of his MasterClass on method acting on an episode of ‘The Tonight Show.‘
Streep and Cox appeared in 2002’s meta comedy-drama film ‘Adaptation’ together, but they didn’t share screen time. The two also provided the voice work to Wes Anderson’s 2009 stop-motion animated comedy film ‘The Fantastic Mr. Fox.’
You can watch the episode below.