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Hunnam Stuck To His Guns
CableFAX: Sons seems to have a lot of fans among the real-life motorcycle clubs. How encouraging is that as an actor?
CH: I think what Kurt (Sutter) does so well is that he’s gotten the foundation of this world right. There are a lot of nuances and details that are exactly right, which I feel like gives us a solid foundation that people will buy it when it gets really big.
CableFAX: You’ve never had a big role like this, and now you’re the lead on a hit TV show. How are you handling the sudden fame?
CH: It’s where I’ve wanted to get to. It’s been the goal, so yeah. So it’s nice. And what’s really great about it is that for a long time, on the films I was pursuing—I would find something I’d like to do, and I’d be with the filmmaker or the director would fall in love with me and decide that I was his guy. And then, you know, a lot of these decisions get made by the marketing departments and not the actual creative entities. And the marketing department would say, “Well he’s not a big star, and we don’t know how to sell it with him.” So they’ll just get Justin Timberlake instead, you know. And so this show, hopefully its success will make me a little bit more marketable when I go out for movies.
CableFAX: Have you started to sense that yet?
CH: Yeah, I have. In fact, I actually just lost a movie to Justin Timberlake last week (LAUGHS)… So it’s not fully there, but yeah—it’s starting to happen.
CableFAX: A lot of people don’t know this, but you’re a writer yourself. And you even just sold a screenplay that’s in development. What’s the background on that?
CH: That came out of frustration with my career. Before this show, I hadn’t worked for two and half years, and it was partly by choice. I was getting offered stuff, but it just wasn’t the type of stuff I wanted to do. And then the few things that I did find I wanted to do, I got in that situation where I almost got the job but didn’t at the eleventh hour for whatever reason.
CableFAX: What kind of stuff were you getting offered?
CH: I got a couple of really big financial offers to do horror films—genre films that sell themselves and don’t really need big stars—but it was kind of lower brow stuff. The nice thing about those is that you can make a lot of money. I was in a bizarre situation where I couldn’t afford to pay my mortgage and was struggling to feed myself and yet turning down million-dollar offers. I turned down two million-dollar offers during this period and thinking, “What the fuck am I doing? If this doesn’t all go the way I hope it will, I’m going to look back in a few years and think…
CableFAX: Your poor agent and manager.
CH: Oh yeah. They were really knocking their heads against the wall.
CableFAX: It’s gotta be tough to stick to your guns like that.
CH: Yeah, it is. But I’m really glad that I did. So what I decided to do was I had gone away to Romania for five months to shoot “Cold Mountain,” and I heard the story of Vlad the Impaler and thought, “It’s really amazing that no one has tried to tell that story. So after about 18 months of real intense frustration, I just decided fuck it. I knew I had about nine months of money left to survive, and I said I’m going to take this time to write a script. And if I can’t sell the script, then that’s pretty much my career over. I was thinking I might go back to England and pursue something else. But I managed to sell it, and it all kind of went right.
CableFAX: Did you sell it before Sons of Anarchy hit?
CH: Yeah.
CableFAX: That’s amazing, considering studios are buying very few scripts these days.
CH: Yeah, there are very, very, very few things getting bought. I got really lucky, and it was after putting so much hard work into it—it was so seamless. Because I sent it to my manager, who had been banging her head against the wall. And I just sent her an email and said, “It’s finally done, you know, and tell me what you think.” And I got a call from her the next morning saying, “I read it. I loved it. I’ve got an idea. Give me 48 hours.” And then the next day, she said okay. She also represents Brad Pitt. And she said, “I gave it to Plan B to read because I loved it and thought it was great, and I just wanted to get a second read. And Plan B turned around immediately and said, ‘We want to produce it’.” So then I signed an agreement with them, and they gave me some notes, and I did a rewrite for them for free just to kind of polish it up and make it a little more commercial. And then they sent it out to a bunch of people and got three different studios that wanted to buy it. So I got a bit of leverage in the negotiations to get a really good deal.
Full article: cablefax.com.
Sutter Discusses How Hal Holbrook’s 4-Episode Stint Was Worked Out
Sutter, who’s become nearly as well known for his hair-trigger temper and vitriolic blog posts as for his groundbreaking series, said he and his crew were “very emotional” when they filmed the heart-tugging final episode in Holbrook’s story arc.
“I experienced that with my grandfather, and a number of people on set could relate to seeing a loved one go to a nursing home and all the guilt that comes with it,” he said. “It was very powerful.”
Four-time Emmy-winner Holbrook had been at the top of Sutter’s wish list of guest stars, and Sutter said he was thrilled to learn that Holbrook was interested in appearing in the gritty series that’s often referred to as Hamlet on motorcycles. But then Holbrook’s wife, Dixie Carter, died last spring and Sutter said he backed off the idea because filming was scheduled to begin almost immediately after her passing.
As it turned out, Holbrook still wanted to do the four-episode stint (and discussion is open for future seasons). The resulting performance, critics have said, could give “Sons” a chance to break its Emmy curse.
We hope that is the case!
“People are drawn to this violent world, but within that there are themes of family and camaraderie and brotherhood,” he said. “If we didn’t have these layers, it wouldn’t have the fan base it has.”
There’s no disconnect, really, between the Sutter who writes about gang rape, torture and mayhem and the one who crafts tear-filled goodbyes between an aging parent and a conflicted daughter.
“I’m a big softie,” Sutter said.
Read more at: latimesblog.com.
Katey Sagal Talks About Her Music
LAT: You’ve recorded two solo albums, and you wrote most of the tracks on those records. But the songs you record for “Sons of Anarchy” are covers, like [Wednesday] night’s Leonard Cohen classic, “Bird on a Wire.” Do you have a preference for covers versus your own music?
KS: My last record, “Room,” I recorded three covers. I love interpreting other people’s music. For “Sons,” Bob Thiele, the show’s music supervisor, arranges the songs in a way that’s very different and I sing them differently than the original artist, so it’s really fun. There’s so many great songs already written, it’s kind of really wonderful you don’t have to write your own.
LAT: Who’s your backup band, and where do you record the tracks for the show?
KS: Bob has a great list of musicians that cut a lot of our source music for the show. He has a studio at his house and we record the band and I do the vocals. Bob is somebody I’ve been working with long before “Sons of Anarchy.” He produced my last record, and he’s been my friend for the last 25 years so we’ve played a lot of music together.
LAT: Do you have plans to record another album?
KS: I would like to. I’m always thinking about doing that, but my schedule is really busy. I’m about to start a musical down at the Music Center. It’s a matter of finding the right time, the right situation. Eventually. I love to make records. I love to play gigs. I have a band and I play live. I just really love playing music.
LAT: How often are you performing live?
KS: Last year, I was performing a lot and then this year, I played a couple gigs during the season while we were shooting. Now is when I would normally start playing with my band, but I’ve got this gig with the Music Center which takes me through the end of December. I’ll get it going again after the first of the year.
LAT: You play at the M Bar in Hollywood?
KS: I don’t like to travel too much because of my family, so I have this really great club in L.A. and I just play there. The M bar is 10 minutes from my house. I just roll down the hill. I’d like to broaden that out, but I don’t have time to do that since I have this other career.
Read the complete interview at latimesblog.com.