SCREEN star Charlie Hunnam is going back to his roots . . . to make a movie about his dad.

The Newcastle-born actor, who rose to fame after starring in the controversial TV series Queer As Folk, now lives in Hollywood where he has a regular appearance in the hard-hitting series Sons of Anarchy, which centres around motorbike gangs.

But he’ll be swapping bikers for Byker, Newcastle, very soon, after revealing how he’s heading home to make a film based on his dad Billy’s life growing up on Tyneside.

Charlie, 30, will write the script for the low-budget project – the second script he has penned recently.

Later this year he’ll see the script he titled “Vlad” – the true story of the historical leader Vlad the Impaler, the real-life inspiration for Dracula – turned into an £85m movie called Blood by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company.

The former Heaton Manor School pupil said: “I am going to sit down and write something, a very, very small story.

“The budget for Vlad is about £85m. I am going to write a very small and easily financeable story about my dad, actually, growing up in Newcastle. So I’m going to go and spend some time with my dad and write that story.

“I am thinking I may be able to produce that in a more hands-on way in terms of hiring the director that I want and hiring an actor to play my dad and stuff, and actually fully produce that film, which would be great.

“He has a really, really interesting life and is a real tough guy from a very, very tough corner of England.

“It’s taken him a while because he is very, very private man and it’s taken a while to get his head around it.

“But after he read Vlad and saw that I was very, very serious about writing, he kind of softened up a bit and now he is going to help me.”

Charlie will be able to make the return trip because two films he was due to film this summer – The Stencil Person and The Last Full Measure – fell through.

The star said the collapse of both movies has left him frustrated.

He said: “Both of those films were being made outside of the studio system and they just fell apart at the eleventh hour.

“I just feel really, really fortunate that I have a regular gig in the shape of Sons of Anarchy. It’s always a heartbreak when you put a lot of time and effort into a creative process and nothing comes of it.”

LOS ANGELES, June 16 (UPI) — The U.K. version of “Queer as Folk” is to air on U.S. television for the first time, the Ovation network said Wednesday.

The series is to have its U.S. debut Sunday as part of the network’s “Art Out Loud” celebration of Gay Pride Month.

Starring Aiden Gillen and Charlie Hunnam, the series focuses on the lives of young gay men in Manchester, England.

A U.S. version of the show ran on Showtime from 2000 to 2005.

The Daily Gossip: Hello, Charlie, how are you?

Charlie: Good thank you; good what time is it over there for you?

The Daily Gossip: Um, it’s a quarter to 8 pm

Charlie: PM?

The Daily Gossip: Yeah and you?

Charlie: I’m in los angles so it’s a quarter to 10 AM for me.

The Daily Gossip: Alright, not bad.

Charlie: Not bad.

The Daily Gossip: I bet it’s not as cold as we are because we’re at minus 20 or something.

Charlie: No where close. It’s actually sunny and beautiful outside it’s been raining for a few days but it dried up today and it’s looking pretty gorgeous

The Daily Gossip: Yes, that’s good. Now you’re originally from the UK, aren’t you?

Charlie: Yeah.

The Daily Gossip: You’ve lived in the states for how long now?

Charlie: For ten years.

The Daily Gossip: Alright, that long?

Charlie: Yeah. I came over. I had an opportunity to come over at the very, very beginning of my career. I’d done a show in England called Queer as Folk and it got a little bit of attention out in America so I came over. I came over and just never left. I always intended and still intend to go to move back to England at some point but I didn’t think there was any point in moving back though while I still had to search and there was such a big fight to get every job. I want to move back where I am in the position where I could just get a script and choose my jobs at will but I certainly haven’t gotten to that point yet.

The Daily Gossip: Do you recommend that there is anything British about you that sort of highlights where you’re born?

Charlie: Yeah. I guess. Yeah. I think that the British dress, for the whole, a little smarter than Americans do. And so when I bring my clothes over from England or when I’m back in England, I tend to particularly, not so much from here now, but when I go back to England I realize that I walk around most of the time in just a hoodie and jeans and then I start to get the peacoats on again and the shoes and the good shirts and stuff like that but I don’t know if it’s America in general, or just the kind of culture of young people specifically but statically, I guess it’s a little sloppier.

The Daily Gossip: That’s true. You were doing films mostly but what interested you in Sons of Anarchy?

Charlie: I think that film right now is in an awful state. I mean Hollywood is really a total disaster right now. There’s no money in the independent world anymore. There’s really only like very kind of big studio films that were getting made and that’s never been what I’ve been interested in doing. I mean, of course, the studio system does make some pretty wonderful films, but there are very few and far between and the competition is very fierce for those films. And so I just responded, I just thought the writing was of very, very high quality and I thought that the idea was original and that Kurt was a serious guy, like a real story teller, who was attempting to do and a show of some quality and little class about it rather than just turning out the same old garbage. I was actually feeling very, very frustrated. I was actually thinking about quitting acting.

The Daily Gossip: Really?

Charlie: Yeah. I wasn’t able, I so scarcely found anything that I was interested in and that inevitably didn’t get it. So I had actually taken a couple of years off and written a screen play because I just needed to do something where I felt like I had a little bit of control over my life. I wasn’t just waiting for the phone to ring everyday. And then, it came to the end and I just actually finished writing the screen play and then I got sent the script of Sons of Anarchy and like I said, just really responded. I thought the quality of writing was really high and so I signed on.

The Daily Gossip: Well that was the perfect timing then.

Charlie: Yeah. No, it was the perfect timing and it’s funny how life works out like that sometimes.

The Daily Gossip: The show takes a side of a motorcycle gang’s life. Did it seem to you like a tight knit? It’s kind of an intense community, isn’t it?

Charlie: Yeah. Yeah. I’m almost quick to say, you know what, whether the TV version of a motorcycle, I mean I went out and spent time and have become very friendly with several guys that live this life for real and although we do a definitely an admirable job of representing it pretty accurately, it’s still made for TV version of it. So they are. I think they are though generally the culture of it, of motorcycle culture is pretty tight-knit. And it’s for instance, unless you’re involved in the club, you’re referred to as us and them. Everyone else is just a civilian. There’s us and then there’s everyone else. I think that is pretty accurate and something we do well in the show, reflecting that.

The Daily Gossip: Did that change your view, your sort of understanding towards the gangs?

Charlie: Yeah. They don’t call themselves gangs. That’s kind of a label that’s been put on them from the outside world. Hey call themselves definitely motorcycle clubs. I guess it did and it didn’t. I grew up in a kind of pretty rough working class environment. I grew up in Newcastle, which is a pretty tough town and my dad’s a really tough guy. And so I kind of, I knew a little bit of that mentality anyway. What actually surprised me most about hanging out with these guys is actually how benign their day was, day to day. I am sure once and a while there is some excitement that goes on or something big happens but in terms of a day-to-day it wasn’t that far removed from the way a lot of people I grew up with lived their lives. I mean certainly to have a fight but not certainly far from Alcapolne, you know?

The Daily Gossip: Alright. Did you have any riding experience prior to this?

The Daily Gossip: I mean riding with bikes.

Charlie: Yeah, no. I did.

The Daily Gossip: Sorry.

Charlie: I did a lot of bike riding for that film and then when I was a kid I had been on dirt bikes and stuff a little bit but it was very different riding these big Harley’s street bikes. It’s been a lot of fun though; I have my own bike now. I kind of fell in love with it.

The Daily Gossip: What type do you have?

Charlie: A Harley. Pretty much very, very similar to the one I ride in the show. I ride a Dina, which is the model of Harley that we ride on the show.

The Daily Gossip: Yeah, okay good. Do they also have to two films, I don’t know, have you done it already? The Stencil Person and then The Last Full Measure?

Charlie: Yeah that’s what I am frustrated. That’s why I was talking about being frustrated earlier. Those two films that I was attached to for a long time that never got made, and aren’t going to get made. They are just an online from be just like a hangover from when they were initially announced but both of those films; really, really good casts. But were being made outside of the studio system like using secondary money, you know, foreign financed and stuff like that and they just fell apart in the eleventh hour. And I was scheduled to be shooting a film right now with a fantastic crew, really amazing cast, and a beautiful script that I’ve been attached to for three years and in the eleventh hour, literally a week before we were supposed to go down and start shooting, the money fell through. so I just feel really, really fortunate that I have a regular gig in the shape of Sons of Anarchy so that I don’t have to at least, it’s always a heart break when you put a lot of time and effort into a creative process and nothing comes of it. But I’m not also, I don’t have to deal with the monetary disaster of that also, I can, you know, Sons of Anarchy allows me to afford to live, you know?

The Daily Gossip: Exactly. Yeah. What about your own screen play? There are plans?

Charlie: Yeah. Hopefully it will be made this year.

The Daily Gossip: Oh right!

Charlie: Yeah. I sold it three and a half, three years ago, maybe right before I started shooting the show and hopefully, you know, it takes time, but we have a director now that everyone is very excited about. Hopefully it’ll get made this year. There’s a competing project out there so hopefully they will get their bums into gear and get it going sooner rather than later.

The Daily Gossip: Yeah. What kind of project was it? I mean to write your own stuff and get it sold, because that can be tricky.

Charlie: Yeah. I was so frustrated with my acting career that I just decided I needed to take some time and do something for myself. And I have been sitting on the story for a while. I’d been to Romania and spent a long time in Romania shooting Cold Mountain. And so I learned the story of Vlad and thought it was really fascinating and it had never been told before. Well, never been told in a big way, you know? So I just set out to really tell the true story of Vlad the Impaler. You know, he was the man accredited for leading the last crusade. He led his life opposing the expansion of the Ottoman army of the Ottoman Empire and so he was a real hero in his part of the world. And of course, to make it a little bit more accessible and give it little bit more of a commercial twist, to weave in the mythology and show how he became the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but he certainly doesn’t bite anybody, or there is no vampirism in our version of it.

The Daily Gossip: Are you going to act in it?

Charlie: I would love to do a little part in it. It’ll just be whether, they are going to try to shoot it over the summer and I might not be available, I might be shooting (inaudible) but it was lucky. I got really lucky. There was a couple of people bidding up for it, there was a couple people that wanted to buy the script when I sent it out and so I was actually able to skew a producer credit, an executive producer credit. I’m not actually producing the film in any real way but I will be credited as one of the producers if it gets made. And that will be a nice thing also, you know?

The Daily Gossip: Yeah exactly. Do you plan to write more?

Charlie: Yeah, definitely. I have two or three ideas that actually, now that I’m not going to do that film that I was supposed to be shooting right now, I am going to sit down and write something, a very, very small story. The budget for Vlad is about 85 million. I am going to write a very small and easily financeable story abut my dad, actually, growing up in Newcastle. So I’m going to go and spend some time with my dad and write that story.

The Daily Gossip: Okay.

Charlie: I am thinking I may be able to produce that in a more hands on way in terms of hiring the director that I want and hiring an actor to play my dad and stuff and actually fully produce that film, which would be great.

The Daily Gossip: Yeah. And how does he feel about it?

Charlie: You know, it’s taken him awhile. He’s a really, has a really, really interesting life and like I said before, is a real tough guy from a real very, very tough corner of England. It’s taken him a while because as most tough guys are that flirt with the wrong side of the law, he is very, very private man and it’s taken it a while to get his head around it. But after he read Vlad and saw that I was very, very serious about writing, he kind of softened up a little bit and now he is going to help me.

The Daily Gossip: Yeah.

Sons of Anarchy Episode 2 TX Date: Weds 5th May, Bravo, 10pm

Source: The daily Gossip

Seenit.co.uk: Good morning.

Charlie: Hey. How are you?

Seenit.co.uk: Thank you so much for doing this interview.

Charlie: Oh, you’re welcome.

Seenit.co.uk: Where in the world am I catching you?

Charlie: I am in Los Angeles.

Seenit.co.uk: Okay so it’s morning, right?

Charlie: Yeah it is morning. 9:30 in the morning.

Seenit.co.uk: How early?

Charlie: 9:30.

Seenit.co.uk: Oh okay, so it’s not that early.

Charlie: No.

Seenit.co.uk: We don’t have a lot of time so I’m just going to shoot the questions, is that okay?

Charlie: Okay. Yeah. Absolutely.

Seenit.co.uk: Great. First question that we have is how much of you is in Jack’s? What do you connect to when you portray him and what is more difficult for you to?

Charlie: I think that more and more we become intertwined as I live with him longer. Certainly my understanding of him, I don’t have to explore the material as much to find the answers, I just understand him more and more but I guess that I really relate to his not his inability, but his reluctance to live a 9-5 type of existence. I, from a very early age, decided that I wanted to do something that I could get to travel and kind of do a variety of work and a variety of places and I think that kind of a freedom to my life that seems to be one of the foundations of what draws people today to the world of outlawed motorcycle lifestyle.

I guess, in terms to what I find most difficult, I don’t know, it’s to just to maintain, I think it is very important to keep a sense of justice and right and wrong with this guy and sometimes the way, the situations he gets put into it’s difficult to, it’s sometimes life, the way he reacts in some situations, sometimes flies in the face of my understanding of him psychologically and in those instances you have to kind of dig a little deeper.

Seenit.co.uk: All in all, he is a very good character; even when he does bad stuff.

Charlie: Yeah. Yeah.

Seenit.co.uk: Unlike other characters.

Charlie: Yeah. Absolutely. So.

Seenit.co.uk: Oh. I’ve read and I’ve noticed it myself, that the narrative of the whole resembles Hamlet a lot. Do you feel that? Do you feel like you’re doing Hamlet?

Charlie: Yeah. I mean, I think specifically with the first season, Hamlet was a very specific template that was followed. Setting up the dynamic of the world and us being the kind of royal family of this world and obviously I think that it will continue to in a broader sense elements of Hamlet that will come through as the season progresses. But I think it was an interesting and a well known dynamic that I felt made this world and that it hadn’t really been explored very much and people didn’t know anything about, a little more accessible in a way, because you kind of understand at least the template of the story going into it and then you’re free to kind of explore the new answers of the world through that.

But yeah, I think that in terms, I think it was very, very similar to Hamlet the first season in terms of the ghost of the father and the narrative of the uncle is kind of taking over and the powerful queen and the son and all of that. And I think that in the second season we kind of lost some of those similarities and just did away with following that narrative more closely but like I said, I think in the future some of the more sweeping elements will return

Seenit.co.uk: The second season is about to be aired in Israel. We only have the first one.

Charlie: Right.

Seenit.co.uk: But it’s more much more extreme than the first one and much more extreme than many TV series that we watched. How did you feel about the script when you first read it about the whole rape thing, which was horrible?

Charlie: Yeah. You know.

Seenit.co.uk: And the violence, which is much more than we’re used to on television.

Charlie: Yeah. I think that it’s, I think that TV with the basic cable, the way basic cable is structured in America, definitely does give a creator license to go a little further and I think that’s why the show found it’s home on basic cable because Kurt, our creator is always, he gets to push the envelope and frankly I, one really has to find peace. I am a writer also and I am very, very, very opinionated about what I do and have a very, whether I have the power to implement change or not I always have very, very strong opinion going into films which I why I have done very few films because I think I have too strong opinions about most things so I turn down probably thirty or forty offers to every one that I accept. But the thing is, we are on a TV show with so many actors, you can, there really needs to just be one voice and that’s the voice of the creator. Because if everybody was chipping their opinion and then there’d be too may cooks in the kitchen and we wouldn’t get anything done.

At times I have wondered if it was a little too extreme, but ultimately I just need to not question the material because I’m potentially going to be doing this TV show for a long time and I found that I needed to make peace with just really trusting Kurt and trusting the material and not questioning it too much because ultimately I don’t really have any say to change it anyway so why drive myself crazy. But also by that, don’t want to give the wrong impression because I think Kurt is fantastically talented and it’s very rare that I do have any kind of big problem with the stuff that is presented to us. It’s just sometimes a challenge to play it because it is very dramatic big stuff. The challenge sometimes is to find the realness in it and keep it grounded, you know?

Seenit.co.uk: What is it difficult for the cast to work like this? Everything happens between you and Ron Purman in the plot, does this affect the relationship? Or are you and Katy?

Charlie: Yeah.

Seenit.co.uk: You really seem to want to kill him, you know, when you want to kill him.

Charlie: Yeah. Yeah the season really, we got to do a lot of fun stuff. I don’t know how much of the second season.

Seenit.co.uk: Oh I’ve seen it all.

Charlie: Oh, you’ve seen all of the second season?

Seenit.co.uk: Yep and I’ve seen the first one twice already. It’s such a great show.

Charlie: Oh wow. Well yeah I mean we, Ron and I, got to do a lot of fun stuff in terms of carrying that kind of disintegration of our relationship to the fullest and I really enjoyed that. And at times we both get a little bit carried away which is fun because we like each other so much and have enough respect for each other we are able to play the game with one another to the fullest. You know the game of acting. So we definitely pushed it. There were moments where the closest where we’re shooting where we almost did come to blows but it was within the context of us already doing a fight scene. So since then, we get a little bit carried away but we’re very, very good friends and I’m actually, I’m going to see Ron this evening. I’m going to go have a glass of wine with him so we kind of, we give each other license to really go for it on set and then all is forgotten the moment we walk off set.

Seenit.co.uk: Off the set?

Charlie: Yeah.

Seenit.co.uk: Is he a father figure to you? Or do you get that relationship?

Charlie: Oh, because he’s old enough to be my father?

Seenit.co.uk: No, because you have such a perfect dynamic on the show. Everything seems to be unusually realistic for a TV show.

Charlie: I think that’s just, I thank you, but I think that’s just because we take our work very seriously and I think that’s to me, always been my approach to any scene is just trying to find the truth and trying to make it feel as real as possible. I think it’s just the way we approach the work, all of us, individually and collectively.

Seenit.co.uk: Okay. Do you get MC people that they watch the show or bikers that give you advice?

Charlie: Yeah. Occasionally, occasionally. Everyone has an opinion. But I don’t, the thing is, we’re not a real motorcycle club. We’re definitely the TV version of a motorcycle club and any difference where, any times we deterred from the truth, is done intentionally by Kurt to serve a story point because serving the story to him is much, much more important than making this a 100% accurate representation of what a real motorcycle club is because one has to give oneself a little dramatic license but I have also, the thing that really annoys me, and I have said this a couple times, a few times motorcycle enthusiasts will tell me that wearing sneakers is a stupid thing to do.

Seenit.co.uk: They’re like No, No.

Charlie: Yeah because most bikers where biker boots. Well that’s like, I really, and I hate to add, nobody under forty has ever told me that. It’s always old school bikers that come up and say that and really they’re just out of date because my favorite part of my job is getting access to world, being granted access to worlds that I wouldn’t never be ordinarily be allowed into and with the show I was granted access to go and hang around with some real outlaws. I love research and I love to go and find out the truth of what it is that I am trying to play and I wouldn’t spend a lot of time with some real, real, real outlaw bikers from the big clubs, from a couple of big clubs.

Seenit.co.uk: Was it horrible or was it?

Charlie: No it was very interesting and they were very nice to me. well to begin with a little bit cautious, but once they realized I was very genuine and I had a really genuine interest in learning from them then they seemed to know, I have had this experience a few times with different groups of hooligans and bikers and stuff, and they, and then it becomes about trying to give you as much information as possible because A. they want to be represented accurately and B. it gives them a sense of ownership; that the way that information that they have told me has affected my performance and they see it on screen. And one of the things that I learned from hanging out with the real, real dudes is that, especially on the west coast, exactly where our show is being, It’s takes place, because I went up to northern California and hung up with these guys exactly the place where the show takes place and all of the young guys wear white sneakers. So it was just something that I observed from exactly the part of the world that we’re tying to play from these guys and I actually urged the other guys in my crew to wear white sneaks but none of them are into it.

Seenit.co.uk: I wonder why, maybe because they are above forty?

Charlie: Exactly.

Seenit.co.uk: Just a quick question about Blood, if you can tell us about the movie that you’re creating?

Charlie: Yeah I did Cold Mountain, it’s a film with Anthony Minghella a number of years ago, six or seven years ago, and spent some time in Romania and just learned the story of Vlad the Impaler and thought it was really, really fascinating and amazing that it’d never been told before in a big way and so I spent some time writing it and Brad Pitt’s company, Plan B picked it up and producing it and Summit Entertainment, that made the Twilight films, are going to produce it and so we hope to make it this year at some point. But it’s as far as possible, the acting rits, it’s a true story of Vlad the Impaler but it obviously, to make it commercial we do weave in a little of the mythology and show, in no uncertain terms, how he became the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Seenit.co.uk: Okay great, thank you so much.

Source: Seen it UK

The season promises to take the SAMCRO prince, Jax (Charlie Hunnam), to Ireland in search of his son Abel, his baby son was spirited away in the last episode of season two by an IRA operative as payback for a murder of a fellow Irish gun-runner in Charming.

Source: Monsters and Critics

TV show Sons of Anarchy, a drama from the creator of The Shield, will be biking onto UK screens from next week when it premieres on channel Bravo.

Sons of Anarchy follows a gang of outlaw bikers from a small Californian town, and stars British actor Charlie Hunnam. The show is currently Bravo’s highest-rating scripted drama series and was described by one blogger as “the most engaging family drama since The Sopranos.”

The second season will motor onto Bravo UK on Wednesday 28 April.
Bravo is the ultimate home of brave, premium drama…

The show “more than doubled its audience in the US during this [second] series and had huge critical acclaim,” said Jo Davey, head of marketing at Virgin Media Television. “Bravo is the ultimate home of brave, premium drama that you have to discover.”

Bravo is part of Virgin Media Television and is available to Virgin’s cable TV customers with subscriptions to either the Size M+, L or XL package. Satellite TV subscribers signed up to Sky’s Variety “pack” will also be able to watch SoA season two.
source: Digital Choices

]]> http://charlie-hunnam.org/archives/62/feed 0 http://charlie-hunnam.org/archives/60 http://charlie-hunnam.org/archives/60#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:19:44 +0000 Holly http://charlie-hunnam.org/?p=60 I’ve added all the episode stills I could find from the episodes that have aired of Sons of Anarchy to the gallery after a slight delay.

Links:
• Season 1 Stills
• Season 2 Stills

]]> http://charlie-hunnam.org/archives/60/feed 0 http://charlie-hunnam.org/archives/57 http://charlie-hunnam.org/archives/57#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:36:48 +0000 Holly http://charlie-hunnam.org/?p=57 I got several emails from people asking me what the deal is between Liv Tyler and Charlie Hunnam who are rumored to be dating. As stated, I don’t post gossip on the site and I don’t want to invade their privacy. If they are dating, more power to them. However this will be the only post relating to such as it’s his personal life and not something to do with his career. I’m sorry if that may offend anyone or tick you off, but it’s how I see the whole ordeal.

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