The TV drama “Sons of Anarchy” has a devoted fan base that has made the show the top-rated series on FX. “Sons of Anarchy’s” fourth season (which premieres on September 6, 2011, at 10 p.m. Eastern/Pacific Time) begins with several members of the SAMCRO motorcycle club being released after a 14-month stint in prison and returning to their hometown of Charming, California. (SAMCRO stands for Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original.)
The time in prison has a profound effect on SAMCRO, including SAMCRO president Clay Morrow (played by Ron Perlman); his stepson Jax Teller (played by Charlie Hunnam), who is SAMCRO’s vice president; and Clay’s wife/Jax’s mother, Gemma Morrow (played by Katey Sagal). At Comic-Con International 2011 in San Diego, a “Sons of Anarchy” discussion panel on July 24 featured Perlman, Sagal, Hunnam and “Sons of Anarchy” creator/executive producer Kurt Sutter, who is married to Sagal in real life. Here is what they had to say when they answered questions from a moderator and audience members.
Kurt, how much time has gone by with the “Sons of Anarchy” characters between Season 3 and Season 4?
Sutter: It’s 14 months. They’ve done their time as part of the deal they’ve set up with [Agent June] Stahl. And now they’re out. And obviously, that’s the first four minutes of the prologue for Season 4. We see them get out.
Charlie, what’s the first order of business for the club?
Hunnam: I think I said this a thousand times today by talking about this but if you ask anyone who’s ever been to prison, the vast majority of the time spent in there is thinking about what you’re going to do when you get out. We all come out with a head of steam, or a little tougher (if you can imagine it) than we were, a little less patient.
And I think for Jax, the big thing is that obviously through the course of Season 3, with my baby [Abel] being taken, the vast majority of the time of the span of Season 3 was spent in the pursuit of getting Abel back, getting him back, getting him home safe. And very quickly after we get home, I don’t really have time to absorb that, because we’re dealing with the problems at home. And then we go to prison.
So I think for Jax, that 14 months was spent doing some pretty intense soul-searching and trying to figure out how to balance his life in the club and life and looking after his babies. I think ultimately that creates a challenge for him, and some difficult decisions are going to have to be made somewhere down the line.
Gemma, what have the women been up to, in terms of holding down the home front while the guys have been in prison?
Sagal: Gemma was on house arrest for a good six, seven months, so she was home shopping, I’m sure. She couldn’t leave the house.
Hunnam: Probably eBay.
Sagal: A lot of eBay. Yeah. The house is full. There’s been some income coming in, but I think at the beginning of Season 4, you see a very happy Gemma. The babies are at home. The guys are coming home. Things are a little more lucrative. There are some changes in Charming she’s not quite sure about, but basically, it’s a happy Gemma to begin with. It doesn’t really last that long. [She laughs.]
[Says jokngly] So she doesn’t really shoot anyone in the first episode of Season 4?
Sagal: No, she’s not shooting anyone right now. No, not in the first episode.
Kurt, can you talk about the new cast members of “Sons of Anarchy” who will debut in Season 4?
Sutter: Rockmond Dunbar plays the new sheriff, Eli Roosevelt. I think it’s a different dynamic for the club, who’ve always had a relationship with law enforcement — at least in their hometown. We also get to play out some of the racial dynamics that happen within the club or not within the club with Rockmond’s character. So that’s going to be a fun thing to explore this season.
We also have Raymond McKenna, who also plays an assistant U.S. district attorney this season. So there’s a lot of external law-enforcement antagonists this season. But I think the interesting part is really the dynamic that’s going on within the club. I’ve said this before, but ultimately SAMCRO’s greatest foe is SAMCRO.
Ron, how is the relationship between Clay and Jax in Season 4?
Perlman: The general way that kind of thing plays out is that anytime there’s an external threat to the well-being of the club, all internal philosophical differences are shelved. But we know as an audience they’re being shelved; they’re not being resolved. We know that there’s this tension that exists, even though there seems to be a lot of bon ami and a lot of single-mindedness and purpose. But these things, the longer they foment, maybe the more dynamic they will be when they finally become too big to ignore.
Kurt and Charlie, how does the relationship between Jax and Tara stand, and where is it going?
Sutter: I think it’s what Charlie just spoke to. I think he did a lot of soul-searching inside [prison]. My sense is that when we begin Season 4, there’s a deeper commitment to family than ever before. So I would characterize that relationship to him. And obviously Tara has given birth to his child [Thomas], so her side is more solidified. So I think we see a deeper sense of love and commitment that the two of them have at the jump.
Hunnam: That’s the way I’d word it. I, as Jax, don’t know ultimately where the next month or the next year or the next decade is going to lead him, but he definitely comes out knowing that he’s always going to have to juggle his life in the club and his personal life, but with a stronger resolve that his personal life is going to take precedent from now on. If difficult decisions present themselves, he’s going to choose his family over the club.
Is choosing family versus the club a continuing theme for Season 4?
Sutter: Yeah, definitely. From my experience, it’s not an uncommon dynamic that happens with some of these guys. The commitment to the club is a very strong commitment. And ultimately, anything that flies in the face of that gets in the way, and decisions have to be made. I think that will happen for more than one character this season.
Hunnam: For me, that’s one of the ways that Kurt is so brilliant, in the way that he writes this show. I think that is the dynamic that everyone can relate to. It’s a dynamic that I can relate to as a man. I have a girlfriend at home, and we live together, and she expects a certain amount from me in our partnership, because Kurt just literally works me like a slave. I find it very difficult to nourish my relationship with her.
Sagal: [She laughs] Is there a choice?
Hunnam: Kurt somehow makes all of these dynamics that are so alien to us — the way these people live their lives — and he kind of tilts them in a way that all of a sudden we as an audience member can relate to these people, which is brilliance of this show.
What kind of teaser can you give us about Season 4?
Sutter: It’s just a romance novel at the end of the day. There are as many if not more f*cked-up things this season than ever before.
What’s the overall tone for Season 4?
Sutter: They’re definitely back on their home turf. Charming, in my mind, has always been a character in the show, and that will really play out this season. So I would say this: They’re big fish back in the small pond, but the pond is polluted.
Why did Jax cut his hair?
Sutter: Yeah, the hair conversation, Charlie and I have been having it for a while. [He says to Hunnam] Why don’t you answer that, man? It’s your f*cking hair.
Hunnam: I went and did a lot of research. [He laughs.] No, I really did. I felt really strongly that telling a story about being released from prison, outside of “Sons of Anarchy,” is something that I’ve been very interested and excited about the potential of telling that story at some point during my career. And it just so happened that the way Kurt took the storyline, I was able to explore that through the show. I just felt really strongly that because of the psychological place Jax was in during this time, his misgivings about the club and just being in that environment, he would just want to take the hair off and take the beard down and live a little bit more primitively while he was in there.
And the research that I did really supported that. I went to two different prisons in the off-season, just to get the true vibe of what it’s like in there. And uniformity is a big thing in corrections these days. It’s not every single prison, and not all the guys cut their beards and hair on the show, but a lot of prisons insist on short hair and short facial hair. I just thought it was the right move, and Kurt was open to letting me explore that. It was kind of cool. I think the idea is that we’ll grow it back out, right?
Sagal: I think it looks pretty good short.
What role will your Otto Delaney character have in Season 4?
Sutter: I find it’s important that I hurt Otto is some way every season, just so I can personify the process of showrunning and what ultimately is being done to my spirit and my person by the time the show will be done. No, Otto for me was always a vehicle of information. Ultimately, these guys travel in two worlds: inside and outside. And Otto was the access to that information.
Quite honestly, it was a device for exposition and a way to tap information. And in [Season 4], because the guys were in jail, some of that will play out. But really, it’s just as a resource to get to information that we would only be able to get to from the prison system.
Can you tell us about any new gangs in Season 4 or in the future?
Sutter: There will be no gangs from the future. We don’t do that. The Russians will come into play. They ended the relationship with the Russians at the end of Season 3. That will come into play this season. They’re going to establish a new relationship with a Mexican-based crime organization … That’s [guest star] Danny Trejo’s character.
Charlie, you were in short-lived comedy TV series “Undeclared” from writer/producer Judd Apatow. Do you prefer comedy or drama? And when can we expect you to do another comedy?
Hunnam: I definitely much, much prefer drama. I had a great relationship with Judd. That show came at a great time in my life And those group of guys — Jason Segel, Seth Rogen and Martin Starr and all the wonderful actors we had on that show — were a big part of my life at that time. But ultimately, it wasn’t what I wanted to do or set out to do. My taste is much more dramatic as an audience member. So there are things I get drawn to that are much more dramatic.
But I actually have been doing so much heavy stuff recently that in this last [“Sons of Anarchy”] hiatus between Season 3 and Season 4, I did a little film, a comedy, called “Frankie Go Boom” with Mr. Ron Perlman. And we play lovers. And that’s not a joke, but Ron’s a woman, so it’s not weird. In the movie, he’s a woman who used to be a man. It all gets very weird. You should check it out.
Will we see Jax taking over as president of SAMCRO?
Perlman: Not if I have anything to say about it.
Hunnam: My dad, who’s actually in the audience today, always had a great line … He used to say when I was getting bigger and I thought I was a badass, he used to look me dead in the eye and say, “Son, when you’re big enough, I’ll be too old.” I think that’s kind of applicable here.
Katey, do you prepare for Gemma the same way you prepared for Leela in “Futurama” or Peg Bundy in “Married …With Children”?
Sagal: With Leela, I just kind of roll out of bed and show up. It’s voiceover. I do tend to play characters that have a lot of costume and hair change. I sort of like the change of physicality thing. Gemma definitely has some preparation physically, like all this blonde in my hair and these stripper nails. She takes great pride in those kinds of things.
To me, it’s one of the fun parts of playing someone in this different world. There’s a lot leather and cleavage, which was probably my husband’s intention: to see me in leather and cleavage. The physical preparation, there’s stuff involved there.
Sutter: I just want to say one thing before we sign off here. I just want to thank you guys [the fans]. We love coming to Comic-Con. And I obviously get it on Twitter and my blog, but to see you guys here in person with this kind of turnout is really f*cking awesome.
For more info: "Sons of Anarchy" website
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