Peter Capaldi Gets Jesse Armstrong Praise for Very Good Delivery
peter capaldi got a public shoutout from Jesse Armstrong on Tuesday at the Banff World Media Festival, where the writer singled out Capaldi and Brian Cox for delivering a very good fuck off. Armstrong’s remark came during a discussion of his work and the language that shapes it, putting two of his best-known actors back into the frame.
Banff World Media Festival
Armstrong said, “Both of them deliver a very good fuck off,” while talking about Capaldi and Cox. He added, “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.”
The line landed because Capaldi starred in one of Armstrong’s series, Thick of It, while Cox became known for a patrician Succession role that included flipping the bird. Armstrong was not speaking in the abstract; he was tying the phrase to performers he has already used to sharpen his own writing about power, status, and volume.
Armstrong’s Writing Habits
“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 in the Canadian Rockies. “To do corrections,” he added, explaining the instinct that pushed him toward collaboration in the first place.
That habit took shape early with Sam Bain. “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 said. The partnership later produced Peep Show and Fresh Meat, and it helps explain why his ear for dialogue keeps circling back to speech that sounds precise, rude, and human at once.
Succession Roots
Armstrong also used the festival to revisit the research behind Succession, saying he studied three examples of powerful media figures: Michael Eisner, Conrad Black, and the late Robert Maxwell. He also said, “I think I can write about this area. I think I have some things to say,” and, “Why are these people like they are? Why is the world like it is? I guess that’s the fundamental itch that I’m trying to scratch, the questions I’m trying to answer for myself.”
He drew a line between that work and the real-life tech barons he mentioned, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, adding, “It’s not fun not having any friends.” Armstrong also said, “It sometimes feels like I’m trying to evade some essential truth when I say that, but it really isn’t,” when addressing the idea that Succession was about the Murdochs.
Armstrong’s directorial debut with the HBO movie Mountainhead, starring Steve Carell, has already moved him further beyond the Succession orbit. For viewers and industry watchers, the Banff remarks sharpen the reading of his catalog: Capaldi and Cox are not just famous names in his world, they are part of the way he writes status, insult, and the sound of power.
