'Succession' 's Brian Cox Apologizes to Fellow Golden Globes Nominees for Win: 'I'm a Wee Bit Shocked'

Brian Cox has taken home the award for best actor in a drama television series at the 2020 Golden Globe Awards.

During the 77th annual awards show on Sunday evening, Cox was nominated alongside Kit Harington (Game of Thrones), Rami Malek (Mr. Robot), Tobias Menzies (The Crown) and Billy Porter (Pose). This was the first Golden Globe nomination for Harington, the second for Cox, Menzies and Porter, and the fourth for Malek.

“I’m sorry — I mean, this kind of event does your head in. No, it really does. It does your head in,” said Cox, who dedicated the award to showrunner Jesse Armstrong. “First of all, I want to apologize to my fellow nominees for winning this. I mean, I’m sorry. And that’s all I can say: I’m sorry.”

“But I never expected this,” the actor, who portrays Logan Roy on the HBO series, continued. “And I’ve been in this business, well, next year I would have been in this business 60 years. I mean, I started when I was 2, and I just never thought this would happen to me, so I’m a wee bit shocked.”

“And I just wanna say, it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t worked with the most extraordinary bunch of people ever: the cast and the crew of Succession,” he continued, calling Armstrong an “incredibly modest man.”

“But man, what a talent, what a gift. He’s inspired us to do the best work, and there’s nothing like it,” Cox said. “There’s nothing like it when you’ve got a showrunner who comes along and empowers you to do your best work.”

“So, thank you, Jesse, because if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have had this,” Cox concluded, adding his thanks to his family and wife as well.

Cox, 73, was previously nominated for the 2000 miniseries Nuremberg, for which he also won an Emmy. In HBO’s Succession, the Scottish actor plays patriarch Logan Roy, the ailing founder of a successful media conglomerate which his family members are fighting to control.

“I’m at a certain age, so I’ve been doing this for a few weeks [laughs] — you’re just grateful to get a role like this now,” he told Rolling Stone in August 2019. “I always thought, I’m in this for the long game. As long as human beings will get up there and say lines and audiences or cameras show up, I’m in there. Logan is sort proof of that particular pudding, in a way. Stick around long enough and you eventually get a role where you think, Yup. This is right. This is what I should be doing right now.”

The 2020 Golden Globes were hosted, for the fifth time, by actor and comedian Ricky Gervais.

“Once again, they’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse. But this is the very last time I’m doing this, which could make for a fun evening,” Gervais, 58, said in a press release when the announcement was made in November.

Touted as Hollywood’s party of the year, the Globes honor film and TV achievements across 25 categories in a three-hour live telecast. The most recent ceremony was co-hosted by actors Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg.

Gervais — who won a Golden Globe in 2004 for his performance in The Office‘s original U.K. series — previously hosted the show in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2016. He will now hold the record for hosting the most Globes ceremonies.

In 2017, Gervais told PEOPLE he wanted to host the Globes again because of the opportunity for new joke material.

“At the moment, there’s something in the news every day that makes me go, ‘I wish I was doing the Globes tonight,’ ” he said at the time. “It would be too easy. Oh my God, how easy would it be? Bullseye.”

The 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony is airing live on NBC from the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on Sunday, Jan. 5.