Charlie Hunnam (Jax Teller) takes a moment to discuss his work on the latest FX hit Sons of Anarchy.
Could you talk about the future of SAMCRO from my character’s point of view?
C. Hunnam: Yes, I mean it’s a continuation along the same trends that I’ve been taking. You know I feel like the way – you know as opposed to the guys that founded this club I was born into it. And I just feel – my overall feeling is that we’ve come a long way from the original genesis of the idea for the club, which is a simple social rebellion and living outside the box you know away from the constraints of regular society.
Oh, so you know I think a little bit more of the same until you know really just a kind of a questioning and a slight reluctance to you know fully get involved in the darker elements of our business until I think probably ultimately I’m going to realize that you know until I become president or until something dramatically changes. There’s a dramatic shift in the overall psychology of the club. I’m fighting a losing battle and I’m going to ultimately I think probably have to bide my time and for the meantime just succumb to the realities of this club a little bit more than I have been doing.
Are there societies or clubs like this in England?
C. Hunnam: No, I think funnily enough it’s one of America’s you know prior to I guess MTV taking over – you know long before that it was one of America’s biggest exports were motorcycle clubs. And motorcycle clubs all over I think you know there are several different American-based or American started motorcycle clubs you know all over Great Britain. And they’re definitely - as far as I believe they’re definitely that reaches up as far as Newcastle and Scotland, too.
Is there any point where you guys are going to travel outside of the country do you know?
C. Hunnam: I hope so. I don’t think the budget would allow for that of our show in the first couple seasons. But it would definitely be you know an interesting thing and a very true and real thing from what I understand about these clubs. The members tend to travel a lot. It’s one of the kind of founding tenets of being in a motorcycle clubs is the kind of is wanderlust and you know the joys of the open road. And that doesn’t you know necessarily constrain these members you know or keep them just in America you know. They go far and wide. So it would be a really smart thing and I think very true thing for us to explore, but I think it would just be a monetary issue whether we could eventually afford to do that or not.
How is Jax going to run things while Clay is being detained. Is he going to do it the same way or has he got a different style?
C. Hunnam: You know I mean I think that that’s one of the kind of ironic things is that you know he’s – Jax is very – would like to do things in a much more quiet – much more kind of methodically you know thought out way and a much more sensible way. And he realizes once he gets in that position where he has to deal with a couple of things - very quickly realizes that he’s going to have to take a kind of a page out of Clay’s book and the way he handles the situation because you know Rome wasn’t built in a day. And it didn’t fall in a day either. You know it’s going to take me a little while to be able to pull back from what we’ve evolved into. And unfortunately I’m not able to you know do that in the timeframe that I’m dealing with. So you know something comes up and has to be dealt with and I actually you know definitely follow Clay’s lead on how to handle it.
As we understand it, you’re one of the few actors that started the show with riding experience.
C. Hunnam: Yes, very limited riding experience. I’d done like a few days on a dirt bike you know many years ago. But, yes, I mean I guess my brother and my father both ride. So I’ve grown up around bikes.
How did it feel to get onto a cruiser?
C. Hunnam: Oh, fantastic! It felt fantastic! You know the reason I’d done you know only dirt bikes – not out of kind of desire to ride to myself, but you know through professional obligations I’d ridden on Children of Men. I had to ride a dirt bike on that. So that’s where my dirt bike you know introduction came from, but I’d always been much more interested in big dogs. So, yes, it was good to get on a hog. It was exciting, especially to take it out onto the road for the first time.
I haven’t got a bike of my own yet. But as soon as I have the time and I feel like it’s already time to do it, I’m going to get myself a Harley Super Glide. I mean a Dyna Super Glide.
What got you interested in the show and your character in the first place?
C. Hunnam: I think it was originally it was Kurt’s great script. I hadn’t really been thinking about doing a TV show. I’d really been exclusively pursuing film. You know it’s somewhat of a straining process because often filmmakers – you know the director of the film would end up falling in love with me and decide that he wanted to use me. And then the studio would feel like I didn’t have enough – you know I wasn’t exciting enough to the financiers and I wouldn’t get it.
So you know I ended up - you know my agent got sent this and hadn’t sent it me for a few weeks. And I ended up – you know he sent it to me and I took a look at it and just thought the quality of the writing was you know just as good as the majority of screen plays that I’d been reading. And you know I just got very excited about the whole thing. I thought that it was such a seldom explored world – the world of outlaw motorcycle clubs – and it wasn’t a world that I was particularly familiar with, but instantly got very interested in and felt like you know this show could potentially have a long run.
And you know I just thought surreally – I’m waffling a little bit, but what initially got me very excited was the quality of Kurt’s work. And then I met with him and we’d kind of confer. He’d ask me if I was interested or if I was willing to make a seven year commitment to something you know as like being – coming from really only doing film and a couple of mini-series. And I just said, you know look, man, as long as the quality stays the same, I would be happy to do this for 15 years. So you know we kind of – he made a deal with me that he was definitely not going to go anywhere or turn the show over to anyone and would continue to be writing to try to match the same quality through the course of the show.
When we talked to Ron Perlman a little while ago, he said that both in acting and reading ahead that some things shocked even him. So have you that as well?
C. Hunnam: Yes. I mean a couple of moments – you know the most shocking moment that has happened so far for me, which has already been adds to see castration of the clown I found fairly shocking. And you know I thought that as the day became closer and closer to us actually shooting it, I just kept expecting to get a rewrite out where it was suggested or we did something else you know that wasn’t quite as dastardly as that.
But that day never came. We went and shot it exactly the way it was written. And then I haven’t actually seen the show because I don’t watch them. I haven’t been watching them while we’re filming. I’ll watch them more when we finish, but I believe that it was add pretty much exactly the way we shot it. So that was fairly shocking.
And then even this last episode that had the burning off of the backpacks was fairly brutal and shocking. But in terms of you know some of the story points, I – Kurt is fairly brilliant you know and I’d said that in my initial meeting. And he basically talked me through the first – you know his idea in detail for the first 13 episodes and then in slightly less detail for the second 13 if we got picked up for a second series. And so in terms of storytelling and the story points, you know I hadn’t really had the opportunity to be shocked by too much of that because Kurt had already you know filled me in beat by beat what was going to happen.
I was wondering if you had any upcoming projects apart from Sons of Anarchy? You were in a movie called The Last Full Measure. Is there anything else?
C. Hunnam: That film never happened actually.
We never – I was supposed to do that and the money fell through at the eleventh hour. You know I – yes, I mean I hope so. I don’t have anything in the can. I’ve been talking to a few people about a couple projects, but I also am a writer. In this in between shooting Sons of Anarchy and Children of Men, I wrote and sold my first film. And so I’m halfway through a second draft of another thing that I wrote that I want to finish up and see if I can you know sell that. And then there’s a third project that I want to start writing. So whether I’m acting or writing, I’m going to keep myself busy.
What was the name of the script you sold?
C. Hunnam: It’s called VLAD. It’s based on the true story of Vlad the Impaler – you know the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a 15th century king living in Wallachia, which is one of the principalities of present day Romania. And it’s all about the Last Crusade and him opposing the expansion of the Ottoman Empire.
How difficult is it for an actor from England to play a tough America motorcycle dude, especially when it comes to accents and cultural differences?
C. Hunnam: No, no, no, no - I don’t think so. I mean the accenting was - you know it’s something that I always felt confident that I could do you know given the right environment. You know it’s just a process. I mean it requires a lot of work and you know I work with a coach or I worked with a coach you know certainly a lot more in the beginning of shooting the show.
And you know it really just requires when everyone else goes home and maybe does half an hour to an hour’s work looking over the scenes for the next day. I have to go home and do two and a half to three hours work because I look over everything and then you know have to run the scenes a lot and figure out the right ways – you know the ways to deliver it all in the American dialect. And then if I have any problems with that, I call my dial a coach and she’ll talk me through some difficult sound combinations and stuff.
So I mean I wouldn’t – I mean it’s not particularly easy. You know it’s just one extra thing to have to worry about, but you know it’s not been getting in my way too much having to do the accent. And my accent – because I’ve traveled around so much – doesn’t really exist anywhere in the world. You know it’s very – a big mixture of both northern and southern English and then a lot of California. So generally no matter what project I’m doing – whether it be England or America – I’m always having to do some form of an accent. So it’s kind of part of my process at this point.
Do you have preference for classic versus modern material or English versus American?
C. Hunnam: Yes, I do. I prefer modern material than classic and American material over English in general. I mean I came to America to move when I was 18 – eight years ago – I mean ten years ago really looking to have an American career. And I like a lot – I mean I think there’s some truly phenomenal British films. The industry is so small there that you can’t – you know it’s much easier to do it over here – and much more opportunity. And the press isn’t quite so brutal over here. But I’ve always – I grew up obsessed with film and although you know a portion of that was English films, the vast majority of it were the great American filmmakers whose work I would watch over and over.
Are there any motorcycle mishaps with either yourself or your costars that we’ll never ever see on the television show?
C. Hunnam: Yes, I would say that’s fair to say. Yes, there’s been a couple of bikes have gone down - none at any great speed thankfully. I actually have put the bike down once myself. Ron Perlman I think holds the record for dropping motorcycles. He’s up there you know in double figures at this point. So he’s pretty good at putting the bike down. But you know thankfully we’ve actually managed – knock on wood – to avoid all injuries so far. Wow.
S. Seomin: This is Scott with FX, Charlie. Why don’t you tell everybody what you did to Jay Carnes?
C. Hunnam: Oh, that’s right. Yes.
S. Seomin: Which had nothing to do with the motorcycle, but you will not see it on…
C. Hunnam: No, it didn’t have anything to do with the motorcycle, but we – well, yes, we got into a little bit of a – we were in a fight sequence. And when you’re doing a fight sequence, if you’re throwing punches or kicks – they’re very, very easy to you know fake for the camera. But any kind of wrestling you know or rough-housing like in close proximity gets much more difficult to fake and usually have to kind of actually do it a little more. And Jay Carnes and I ended up getting into a little bit of a tussle. I was supposed to pull him out of a barber’s chair and spin him round and throw him against the wall.
Long story short, he ended up hitting the wall a lot harder than we had intended to – face first - and cracked the bridge of his nose and I didn’t realize. So I continued the scene where I just throw him up another wall and spin him around and then pretend to throw him through a window. And he was going ouch, ouch. And I said… This guy is a really good actor. And then once we finished the take – by the time you know 15 seconds later – both nostrils were pouring with blood and the bridge of his nose was cracked completely open. So I guess that also could be considered a minor mishap.
