Actor Charlie Hunnam is reuniting with his former Sons of Anarchy cast members for a new meta spinoff limited series titled Legends on FX. The upcoming project brings back original cast members including Katey Sagal, Ron Perlman, and Maggie Siff, while series creator Kurt Sutter is not involved in the new production.
FX Entertainment president Nick Grad described Legends as "both a love letter" to the original series and "a fun meta twist on what fans think they know." Hunnam developed the concept alongside Mindhunter alumnus Jonathan Groff. According to FX, the story follows the cast reuniting at a fan convention more than a decade after the original show ended, where "the line between life and art blurs as the fractured brotherhood finds itself up against a real-world threat more dangerous than anything they ever faced in their show."
Hunnam, who received an Emmy nomination for playing serial killer Ed Gein in the Netflix anthology Monster, had been considering ways to reunite the group for years. In a 2022 interview with Access Hollywood, the British actor noted: "It would be something that I would be incredibly excited about, so we’re sort of in the infancy of exploring the viability of the idea."
Creation of the motorcycle drama
The original series, which aired for seven seasons from 2008 to 2014 on FX, followed the violent exploits of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original, known as SAMCRO, in central California. Sutter framed the story as a modern adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, setting the drama within an outlaw motorcycle club.
Sutter was working as a writer on the FX cop drama The Shield when father-son producing team Art and John Linson pitched him the concept. Sutter recalled to The Hollywood Reporter in 2015: "I just felt like I’m not the guy you go to to adapt anything. My best asset is my imagination." FX allowed Sutter creative freedom, and the show grew into the network's biggest traditional hit, attracting 10 million weekly viewers at peak viewership.
Sutter created the role of club matriarch Gemma Teller specifically for his wife, Katey Sagal, whom he married in 2004 in his first marriage and her third. Sagal explained on NPR's Fresh Air in 2013: "He came to me as he was writing it, and said 'I think I have a part for you,' but he didn't really tell me what it was. And I didn't really know what it was until I actually read the script." Sagal added that her protective maternal nature inspired the character: "At her core, her motivation is her child. At any cost, she will protect him and her club."
Casting decisions and motorcycle training
Sutter cast Hunnam as club prince Jax Teller after watching the British actor in the 2005 football crime drama Green Street Hooligans. In the series narrative, Jax Teller's mother Gemma married the man who replaced Jax's late father as president of their local motorcycle club under murky circumstances.
Ron Perlman was not the first choice to play SAMCRO president Clay Morrow, Jax's stepfather and eventual nemesis. Scott Glenn played Clay in the pilot episode before Sutter informed him that the network wanted a different direction. Perlman told Fresh Air in 2015: "I understood going into it that they were looking for a more operatic version of this guy," while praising Glenn as "brilliant" but "very subtle." Glenn told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020 that leaving the pilot set him on course for the 2014 HBO series The Leftovers, calling it the "single best acting experience I’ve ever had."
Perlman faced steep learning curves riding motorcycles for the show. The New York native told NPR he had only learned basic riding for "a movie that never happened" and joked: "Me and the bike…let's put it this way, I'd rather be eating Haagen-Dazs."
Censorship and script security measures
Production presented ongoing regulatory challenges for Sutter. He told Entertainment Weekly ahead of the 2014 finale: "I still get lots of Standards & Practices notes about violence and nudity and language. And it’s arbitrary in that it changes every year."
To protect plot secrets, Sutter instituted strict audition protocols. He told Entertainment Weekly: "For casting, we were getting screwed because people were taking sides and giving away story points, so now we write separate scenes for auditions that don’t give out any story points but essentially cover the same emotional range that we need." Sutter added: "I don’t think it’s ever gonna stop people from watching, but you hate anything getting spoiled, especially on a show where we sort of pride ourselves on doing things that are unexpected."
Filming major character deaths
The show's season six finale featured the shocking death of Jax's partner, Tara Knowles, played by Maggie Siff, who was stabbed in the head with a carving fork by Gemma after Gemma believed Tara betrayed them. Sagal told People: "When I first realized that Gemma was going to kill Tara, I had a moment like, oh s--t, man, nobody’s going to wanna see Gemma again. She’s killing beloved Tara!" However, Sagal noted: "The very next day, I went to do an autograph session and people were showing up with forks for me to sign."
Siff told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013 that she suspected her character's death early in season six when Sutter sighed while discussing her character arc. Siff described filming the scene: "The knowledge that it was going to happen, it felt unreal, and then surreal. And then shooting it was really hard. It was really technical, and we had our stunt doubles there." Siff added: "It’s a very surreal thing to watch yourself be brutally murdered...But as an actor I feel like it’s an amazing way to go out, it’s like a lot of fireworks."
Soundtrack choices and cast departures
Music played a key role in the series. Sutter told Entertainment Weekly he had to "tap into some of my big connections" for finale music. He co-wrote the closing song "Come Join the Murder," performed by The White Buffalo and house band The Forest Rangers, earning an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics. Sutter also told Vanity Fair he fought "for years" to secure Bruce Springsteen's "Adam Raised a Cane" for the episode opening.
Actor Taylor Sheridan left his role as Deputy Chief Hale following a contract dispute. Sheridan told Deadline in 2021 that he was paid "less than virtually every other person on the show and not enough for me to quit my second job," leading him to quit and later create the hit series Yellowstone. Sheridan quipped that Deputy Chief Hale got run over so he could run.
Character risks and set production
Sutter took a risk casting Walton Goggins, known for playing LAPD Detective Shane Vendrell on The Shield, as trans sex worker Venus Van Dam. Goggins, who later appeared in The White Lotus, paired with Kim Coates' character, murderous Tig, to form what became the show's least toxic couple. Goggins reflected: "It was so smart for Kurt to approach it that way, through humor and through real curiosity on behalf of these ultra-masculine men. It felt so genuine and so real...Once the shock is over, you say to yourself, 'You know what, I get it. She's really sexy. What a very cool lady.' I hope we've done that."
Makeup artists managed intense physical effects on set. Makeup artist Michelle Garbin told Entertainment Weekly in 2014 that head of makeup Tracey Anderson once performed "six bullets in six minutes, in a pit, in the middle of the night," while Anderson quipped: "I just wanted to get out of the pit."
Series finale and Jax Teller fate
Hunnam recalled the emotional toll of concluding the series. He told Glamour UK in 2017: "It was actually quite emotional for me, living and loving that guy for eight years, to have to finally put him to bed." Hunnam added: "I found myself going back to set a lot. I knew the security guards and for a couple of days said, ‘Oh, I forgot something,’ 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."
Sutter told Entertainment Weekly in 2014 that he always intended for Jax to meet a fate similar to his father's on the road rather than leaving the ending ambiguous: "I had a sense from the beginning of this ride that I liked the notion of Jax being brought to the same place of his father but getting it right. And the idea that he was going to go out in the same way, whether it’s tribute, whether it’s going out on the road, but I wasn’t sure how much of it I was gonna leave up to the imagination of people." Sutter explained: "I felt like this has not been a show of what-ifs. This has always been a show about direct, specific choices, and direct, specific consequences, so I realized I needed to be clear in terms of whether it happened or it didn’t. And I just felt that it ultimately was the greatest sacrifice, and that’s how it would have to end." Hunnam agreed, stating his character's voluntarily violent end "felt like the greatest celebration of who Jax was."
