Charlie Hunnam has had a pretty varied career, popping up in everything from Undeclared to Pacific Rim to Calvin Klein advertisements. Regardless, he’s most known for his role on FX’s Sons of Anarchy, a series which ran on the cabler until this spring. While Hunnam has taken gigs in the time since the drama ended, he now says he did some pretty over-the-top things to stay in the mindset of Jax Teller for nearly seven years. Here’s how Hunnam became Jax, according to a recent interivew:
I pretty much wore nothing but plaid shirts for the last seven years, and then as soon as I finished, I just felt compelled [to] have a massive spring cleaning. I just went through and got rid of everything. I put everything I had into that show. I lived it as much as I could. I never got in a car the whole seven years. I was only on my bike and rolling around with a bunch of real bikers and occasionally acting like a maniac.
I love how thoroughly it seems like Hunnam became Jax in his regular life, dropping cars in favor of bikes and picking up on the character’s love for flannel. He even admits to behaving like a "maniac" on occasion. It would be hard not to get so into a character like Jax Teller, a man of many contradictions who ultimately follows in the footsteps of his father and fellow SAMCRO member, especially considering Sons of Anarchy had a lengthy seven season run on FX. Throw in the fact that FX shot extra-long episodes for the final season of the drama and it becomes easy for fans to see how the actor may have had trouble having a personal identity outside of the character that made him a well-known name in many households.
Hunnam also tells Details that he had a really difficult time letting go of the Jax character, despite the way his character’s fate ended up going in the series finale.
But saying good-bye to the character was a motherfucker. As stupid as it sounds, it really felt like a genuine bereavement, because he was this guy that I loved and hung out with constantly for seven years.
Now, everyone is moving on from the FX drama. Charlie Hunnam is signed on for Crimson Peak and The Lost City of Z. Kurt Sutter, who created the drama has another series in the works called The Bastard Executioner. While Hunnam is moving on to bigger screens, FX’s Bastard Executioner will bring back Katey Sagal along with popular Sons director Paris Barclay. And this time, we promise there should be no flannel involved.
