Succession creator Jesse Armstrong came to Banff World Media Festival on Tuesday to praise U.K. actors Peter Capaldi and Brian Cox for their foul mouths.
“Both of them deliver a very good fuck off,” Armstrong said of Capaldi, who starred in one of his series, Thick of It, and Cox who became renowned for flipping the bird in his patrician role in Succession. “There’s some things which British idiom is good on, and ‘fuck off’ sounds better, I think, in British and Scottish dialect than it does in U.S. and Canadian accents,” he added.
During a keynote address in the Canadian Rockies, Armstrong also revealed a habit of sitting with pen-in-hand when watching TV or reading books. “When I’m reading a novel, I read with a pen in my hand, and I guess that’s the way I watch TV and how I grew up watching TV and reading novels,” Armstrong said.
“To do corrections,” Armstrong, the son of an English teacher, revealed. He broke out in his native U.K. by co-creating the British comedy show Peep Show with his longtime writing partner Sam Bain, before they collaborated on Fresh Meat.
“That’s what got me writing, as I read a screenplay with my pen in my hand, making corrections, and he (Bain) didn’t take offense. He liked them and that’s what encouraged us to write together,” Armstrong recalled. The duo also adapted The 70s Show for British TV, which failed with their audience, but became a big learning experience.
