Brian Cox reveals he turned down a role in Game Of Thrones because it didn't pay enough
The Succession actor also talked about why he didn't appear in the Harry Potter films

A new excerpt from Brian Cox’s memoir, Putting The Rabbit In The Hat, revealed that the Succession star almost had a central role in another HBO smash hit: Game Of Thrones. In the excerpt, published in GQ, the Scottish actor didn’t pull any punches about why he didn’t join the show.
“I’m often asked if I was offered a role in Game Of Thrones—reason being that every other bugger was—and the answer is, yes, I was supposed to be a king called Robert Baratheon, who apparently died when he was gored by a boar in the first season,” Cox wrote. “I know very little about Game Of Thrones so I can’t tell you whether or not he was an important character, and I’m not going to google it just in case he was, because I turned it down.”
“Why?” he continued. “Well, Game Of Thrones went on to be a huge success and everybody involved earned an absolute fortune, of course. But when it was originally offered the money was not all that great, shall we say say. Plus I was going to be killed off fairly early on, so I wouldn’t have had any of the benefits of the long-term effects of a successful series where your wages go up with each passing season. So I passed on it, and Mark Addy was gored by the boar instead. (I lied. I did google it.)“