‘Sons of Anarchy’ Star Charlie Hunnam on Returning as Jax Teller — ‘I Would Never, Ever Put That Cut Back On’
Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam is fully aware that the role of Jax Teller gave him a career. But he has no desire to revisit the character who made him a star. While reflecting on SOA’s impact during a recent interview, Hunnam said he “would never, ever put that cut back on.”
The ‘Sons of Anarchy’ star had trouble moving on from Jax Teller
SOA ran on FX for seven seasons from 2008 through 2014. During that time, Hunnam completely committed to the series and his character. According to Looper, when it was time for Hunnam to say goodbye to Jax Teller, it wasn’t easy. The 40-year-old admitted that he would make excuses to visit the set in the early days after the series wrapped.
“I knew the security guards and for a couple of days said, ‘Oh, I forgot something’,” Hunnam revealed. “So they’d let me onto the set, and I’d just walk around at night because I wanted to be in that environment and go through a personal process of saying goodbye.”
Since SOA ended, Hunnam has focused mostly on film roles instead of television. But that will change soon. He says he prefers TV over movies, and he will be returning to the small screen in the series Shantaram.
Hunnam says he enjoys long-form storytelling. He noted that the experience of working with a group of actors for a long period of time is “really, really exciting and rewarding.”
Charlie Hunnam says playing Jax Teller was ‘almost like a college experience’
While speaking to People magazine about the impact of SOA over the past 12 years, Hunnam admitted that the FX series gave him “the ability to have confidence” that he would be able to make acting a “lifelong career.” The Newcastle, England native compared his seven seasons on the show to a college experience.
“I think I went into Sons of Anarchy being a pretty unaccomplished actor in terms of my skill set,” he says. “I wasn’t one of these people that were born enormously and innately talented. I had to really cultivate a skill set.”
Hunnam explained that he cultivated a lot of his skill set by going to work and shooting 10 pages a day on SOA for seven years. He feels like that was his “college days.” He says he went into the show knowing very little about the process of acting. When he came out of it he knew “a little bit more.”
Charlie Hunnam says he will never reprise his ‘Sons of Anarchy’ role
Six years after the series’ conclusion, Hunnam says fans are constantly asking him about reprising the role of Jax Teller. His answer is simply “no.” Hunnam explained that he “would never, ever put that cut back on.” He added that he wouldn’t put his character’s rings back on, not even for Halloween.
“It was a very deep experience,” he explains. “I lived with that character inside me for years, like, in a very real way. In a way that manifested in ways that I could never even [have] imagined.”
Hunnam says that Jax is dead now, so there is no way of ever bringing him back. He made it clear that “when he died, he died.”
Moving on from SOA, Hunnam is not just acting in other projects. He’s also ventured into writing. He says that during the pandemic he’s been writing “85 hours a week for the last seven months.”
Fans can currently catch Hunnam in Jungleland. The film is now playing in select theaters and will premiere on VOD platforms on November 10.
