Charlie Hunnam Rewatches Sons of Anarchy, The Gentlemen, King Arthur & More

It's so embarrassing to say as an Englishman,

but I'd been working in America for so long,

that when I got King Arthur, [laughing]

I had to hire a dialect coach

to help me sound English again,

which was sort of an absurd situation to find myself in.

Hi, I am Charlie Hunnam

and today I am gonna be revisiting

some scenes from my career.

[upbeat melodic music]

I never watch myself,

the idea of watching these clips now is terrifying,

but I'm willing to do it for my love of Vanity Fair.

Let's watch.

[upbeat melodic music]

[VCR clattering]

[upbeat melodic music]

My son is twisted up.

He just lost his mom.

Goodness, right on, okay.

Holy moly, this is a great scene.

The scene I think that I've been most nervous about

in my whole career, for those that don't know the show

and I'm sorry, there's gonna be

some pretty serious spoilers here,

I confront my best friend, who knew that my mother

had killed my wife and failed to tell me that.

It's about nine pages of dialogue and I said,

I'm not rehearsing it, I just need to go away and prepare

and we're just gonna do it.

So we set everything up and something happened in the room

where life became what was happening,

like we were actually in that room,

this was actually happening to us

and I just broke down and started wailing inconsolably

and sort of being violent with my guy

and it was really good,

it was better than I could have ever hoped it was gonna be.

Peter Weller was directing the episode and came in and went,

Uh, uh, uh, I don't know what that was,

but it was the greatest single thing I've ever seen.

It's a wrap, we're not shooting it again.

And then our beautiful cinematographer, Paul Maibaum

came in white and he said,

Actually, we are shooting that again,

the camera didn't roll.

And it wasn't as good, but them's the breaks, you know?

It's still pretty good.

I had an extraordinary experience in researching

this role and this character,

where we had a wonderful producer called John Linson

and through John, I had access to a motorcycle club

from Oakland, a well known club

and I got to meet the guy that I was gonna play,

there's a kid called Chill Will.

His dad was also in the motorcycle club

and I met him and spent four days with him

and loved him and got to see

what the real of this thing was.

But I had to come back and work with Kurt,

'cause we were about to start shooting the show.

Unfortunately, Will lost his life that day.

I then felt this responsibility in a way

to honor him through this character.

Is it true? [breathing deeply]

I got a lot of criticism for some of the choices I made,

you know, I wore white tennis shoes,

but this kid was a 19-year-old West Coast, Oakland badass

and he's gonna wear sneakers and Dickies

and that was his vibe, so I modeled a lot on Chill Will

and I got a lot of criticism, you know,

Bikers wear leather boots, sort of vibe.

I just went, Okay, well, you know, maybe most bikers do,

but these ones don't.

[Juice] Your mom was on the floor, freaked out.

Through the course of the show, I had the benefit

of losing some of my brothers on the show.

The epic, amazing Ryan Hurst, who played Opie

was the first to go and he really struggled

with saying goodbye to that character.

He had this beautiful sort of articulation,

where he said that, Every actor carries around

a graveyard full of characters,

that they've brought to life and then had to kill.

But Opie was the first time in his career,

that the son of a bitch refused to die,

he was just alive and in him

and he found himself in a bookshop.

He said, There's about 1,000 books in the bookstore

dedicated to the creation of a character

and not a single line in any of them

of how to kill them when you were finished.

And so I knew that it was gonna be rough

after eight years of living with Jax

to try to say goodbye to him.

I'd shared my psyche and body with him.

[VCR clattering]

[upbeat melodic music]

You can keep it to peel your grapes.

[hand slapping]

Now, that would've hurt a lot more if I left the ring on.

I had forgotten Aidan Gillen slapped the shit outta me,

that was a real slap and that was not scripted,

I'd totally forgotten.

I worked with Aidan Gillen on Queer As Folk

and we played lovers and it was an amazing experience

being exposed to his process

and just an actor of that caliber, his integrity.

That, I remember just being so excited, you know,

15 years later to go back and get to work with him again

until he slapped the shit out of me unscripted

and then I was less excited

about working with him in the next scene.

King Arthur, my first opportunity to work with Guy Ritchie,

which was a dream come true, I'd grown up on Snatch

and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,

so it was very exciting to get to do this.

I see what you're doing, you're trying to get me

to do something razzle dazzle with that sword.

I'm gonna tell you right now,

I'm not getting drawn into this mess.

It felt like me and Guy had a shorthand from minute one.

I knew that we were gonna love each other,

he was less confident that that was gonna be the case

and he didn't wanna see me

and King Arthur is like my movie.

I wanted to become an actor

from watching John Boorman's Excalibur,

felt like if we're doing King Arthur, that's my role,

but he didn't wanna see me and so I said,

Please, I mean, literally, 20 minutes, a cup of tea,

I'll fly myself to England.

I'm asking just for 15 minutes

so I can tell you how much I love you and this movie

and then if you still don't like me,

then you know, that's more fool you.

[tense melodic music] [swords clanking]

Guy is fantastic with action, it's interesting,

some of the great action sequences in the film

were never rehearsed, never actually written onto the page.

I show up and Guy said,

We're gonna go over to this other location

and let's like put together a little fight scene.

And so he would just put these action sequences together

and a couple of the great ones from this film

were just literally done in an hour on the day.

[VCR clattering]

[upbeat melodic music]

I haven't seen this film since we made it, let's roll it.

[Inman] Come down from there.

No sir, here's fine.

I'll just shoot the horse out from under you.

You riding Captain Teague's animal?

I was handsome when I was 22.

I remember when I met with Anthony Minghella,

he said, Why do you wanna do this role?

And I said, The confidence of youth,

which is my last line in this film.

Tell you what I got on my side.

[Inman] What you got on your side?

The confidence of youth.

[guns firing]

And then kill the hero of the film that we've watched

for two and a half hours trying to get home

and he gets home and I kill him, sorry, Jude.

[tense orchestral music]

I was suggested to Anthony Minghella

and he didn't know my work

and so he read some interviews with me

and I suppose I had done an interview at some point,

where I was talking about I guess being handsome

in some capacity, I think I had been asked

if I thought that was sort of an imposition

to being a serious actor and I said,

No, you need to capitalize

on every opportunity that you have

and all of the tools in your toolbox

and if I'm getting hired over other actors,

because I'm slightly more handsome than they are,

then that's unfortunate for them, but pretty good for me

and I'll take that.

That was a white. That was Irish.

Now your friend, Georgia here, we went down to visit you,

when we heard you were harboring deserters

and he told us after some persuasion.

It's pretty intimidating.

I remember feeling a bit out of my depth.

I was having the opportunity to work

with some Titans of the industry,

Ray Winstone, for instance, you know

and to be going sort of toe to toe with Ray Winstone,

had grown up being an enormous fan of his

and to me, the man was just a colossus.

I think this was December 20th, something like that,

it was about four o'clock in the morning,

we were up a mountain and we were doing a scene

and it's just sometimes,

it has to be manufactured in the editing,

sometimes there's just magic happening in real time

and that was one of those times.

It was four o'clock in the morning

and we were trying to force our teeth to stop chattering,

so we could say lines of dialogue

and it was just alive and magic and great

and then somebody called, Cut in the middle of the scene

and you know when a scene's going well

and someone calls, Cut, you know there's a problem

and someone said, What, what is going on?

And they said, Sorry, the film froze in the camera.

And that was a wrap for us,

it's not very easy to defrost a camera.

So we went home and came back in January and finished.

[VCR clattering]

[upbeat melodic music]

[Youth] You see enough, huh, huh? Now I got back up.

Shit, what's going on? Round boy.

You couldn't back up a phone, you...

Bruv, this guy's trying to take my phone.

This is the perfect example

of Guy Ritchie's mastery of filmmaking.

This scene didn't exist in the script.

We had these great boys and it was a chase sequence

and they were coming with their, you know, London banter

and he said, I just feel like we've gotta do a scene

with these boys, are you willing to just roll with it?

And I said, I'm here to work, Guy, let's go.

Guy put the camera on me,

he wanted to establish my side of it first

and he was just calling out lines of the best dialogue

on the fly to tell them,

And then I'll be gone like the darkness at dawn.

Then I'll be gone like the darkness at dawn.

Yeah, yeah, that was good, do it again, do it again.

So I would say it again and then he would say like,

Da da da! Give him one of these ones.

No, look at me, look at me, Charlie, give him one of these.

Da da da da da!

Da da da da da!

So we just literally got a camera up

and we shot that scene in I don't know, 45 minutes,

something like that and Guy really is a master

of, you know, working on the fly.

I gotta try to get Guy Ritchie to hire me again.

I don't know, like I thought I did good work in this,

now he's made a couple of movies since,

no phone call, no invitation.

Where's the love, Guy? Come on.

[VCR clattering]

[upbeat melodic music]

[men grunting]

Who are you?

What do you want?

Henry Costin, I replied to your advert in The Times.

Robert is a really, really interesting, talented creature.

We didn't really talk or hang out in any capacity

other than on screen

and there's conflict between these characters

and I could feel it right off the bat,

like okay, this isn't gonna be a situation,

where we're gonna hold each other's hands,

cheerlead each other through this.

We're gonna be standing on either side of a ring

and you know, we'll meet in the middle

and figure out what happens.

I only got to know the character.

I mean, if I met Robert now,

it would be like I was meeting him for the first time.

I really respect him and admire him though,

I think he's a terrific actor.

Are you drunk, Mr. Costin?

No.

[Percy] You could have fooled me.

Well, well.

I finished shooting King Arthur

and was 185 pounds

and then had 10 days to pivot into getting ready

for Lost City of Z

and I was in a costume fitting with James Gray

and I took my shirt off and revealed my physique

and he started to cry [laughing] and I said,

Something tells me these aren't tears of joy.

And he said, I think you just ruined my film.

You look like a pugilist, we need a Victorian gentleman.

And I said, Don't worry, I got 10 days. [laughing]

So I didn't eat anything for 10 days and I lost 10 pounds,

so I was already down to 175 and then I weighed myself

the day we finished 10 weeks later and I was 145 pounds.

My reputation as a man rests entirely on our success.

I think you shall find me capable of every sacrifice.

I thought the central conflict,

that I could really relate to of Percy Fawcett

was the balance between bringing forth what he wanted,

his intention for his life and his responsibilities,

that he had specifically to his family

and he opted to fulfill his sense of purpose

more than he felt the need

to adhere to the responsibility as a family man,

that was something that I could really relate to

and wanted to capitalize on.

So I had decided when I left, I just took a little hold all,

I didn't take anything with me but the script

and two changes of clothes.

I didn't take a phone or a computer

and said to everyone in my life, my mum and my fiancee

and everyone, I'll see you when I'm finished.

I have to be selfish, I have to feel you missing me.

I have to be worried about you

and I have to feel like a prick.

So I'm sorry, but I'm gonna ask you all to do this for me.

And they said, Okay, we get it.

We don't love it, but we get it.

[VCR clattering]

[upbeat melodic music]

Why are you trying to help me?

I barely know you, you know nothing about me.

Because you're my mate. Oh yeah, mate.

Angry, angry Lin, he was having a particularly bad day.

This is a project that's kind of like

a dream come true for me, I read the novel,

which this TV show is based on seven years ago.

It's the first opportunity that I've had to fully produce.

I mean, I've been involved in this for seven years.

I'm really pleased with the show

and we've only told the first chapter,

the first quarter of the book,

so very hopeful that we'll be able to catch an audience

and tell the rest of the story.

What? Listen,

here, we have nothing.

This place is not working

without everyone helping each other

like I want to help you.

I really enjoy long form storytelling,

enjoy being able to play a character

for a long period of time

and to get to work with the other actors

and develop the sort of molecular nuances

of those relationships, so when I finished Sons,

was very eager after a break to go back to television

and then I was given Shantaram

really just to look at as an adaptation for screen,

not specific, but I knew the history of this book,

that Warner Brothers had owned it for 15 years

and this is a 980-page odyssey

and so to try to distill that down to two hours

was pretty much impossible.

Looking at it through the lens of being a giant fan

of long form storytelling, I read the book

and I called my producer friend who gave it to me

and I said, This is a TV show, right?

And he said, Chico, it's a TV show

and you are Lin baba, let's go to work.

So we went to work.

With us both working together,

we will make good money like that.

I really believe that India

is the central character of this piece

and so it's set in India, in Bombay,

which is now Mumbai, 1979.

We lost the ability to shoot in India due to Covid,

so then we lost our central character and had to pivot

and ultimately go and shoot in Thailand.

But luckily for us,

we had an extraordinary production designer

called Chris Kennedy who literally created India for us

in Bangkok in Thailand.

You know, it was a real challenge

and I really believe that India

is the lead character of the show.

I feel quite proud of the way we were able to do that

and sort of overcome those challenges.

[upbeat melodic music]

In the beginning of my career,

I thought that I didn't like watching the end results,

because it was ultimately watching someone else's vision

of the work and not my own

and the difference between those two visions

would kind of throw me a little bit.

And over the years, when I've gotten the opportunity

to work with more and more directors,

where I felt like our visions were completely aligned,

I realized that it's actually

that I just don't like watching my own work.

[upbeat melodic music]