Category: Interviews

Video/Photos: Charlie Stops by Jimmy Kimmel LIVE!

Video/Photos: Charlie Stops by Jimmy Kimmel LIVE!

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As we previously announced Charlie was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel LIVE! yesterday to promote his new series ‘Shantaram’ which will stream exclusively on AppleTV+ and premieres October 14th.

In case you missed it you can check out his interview below:

I’ve added high quality photos of Charlie seen arriving at the studio before the show in addition to official stills and screen captures from his interview. You can view all those below and in our gallery now.


Public Appearances > 2022 > 10/03/22 – Arriving at Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Public Appearances > 2022 > 10/03/22 – Visiting Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Screen Captures > TV Appearances > 10/03/22 – Jimmy Kimmel LIVE

Press/Interview: Charlie Hunnam And Shubham Saraf Discuss How The Spirit Of Chaos (And One Drunken Night) Fueled ‘Shantaram’

Press/Interview: Charlie Hunnam And Shubham Saraf Discuss How The Spirit Of Chaos (And One Drunken Night) Fueled ‘Shantaram’

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UPROXX recently spoke with Charlie and his Shantaram co-star Shubham Saraf:

I couldn’t help going there because Apple’s first promo image for Shantaram showed you on a bike, and you’re on a bike (for about a second) in the trailer. You’ve talked about that a little bit, but how do you think the SOA audience will receive this show?

Charlie: [Smiles] I don’t even know who the Sons of Anarchy audience is. I get the sense that it’s actually more diverse than one might think initially from looking at the show. I occasionally go to Comic-Con events to see people, and the fanbase still seems very rabid for that show, but it is incredibly diverse. There’s a lot of young people coming to the show who didn’t see it the first time around, which is great. I hope that the audience shows up. I hope that they don’t show up with too much of an expectation that this is some sort of sequel to Sons of Anarchy. Because although one of the lead characters in both shows looks very similar, I think the comparisons really end for me. And listen, I understand. I’ve been sort-of poking fun at Apple a little bit. Apple’s the biggest, most powerful corporation in the world, so they can handle little old me poking fun at them a little. But I don’t know if that was the smartest idea to release that image because it did create a little bit of an expectation that I’m not quite sure we’re going to be able to deliver on, but I’m not the boss.

Both are dramatic and stressful shows, but it looks like you guys had fun, too.

Charlie: We did.

From the moment your character, Lin, hopped off that bus, and Shubham’s character, Prabhu, walked up to him, there was instant chemistry between you two. Had you guys familiarized beforehand, or did you go in cold?

Shubham: Oh, I hadn’t met Charlie! I hadn’t seen Sons of Anarchy. I still haven’t seen Sons of Anarchy! I hadn’t watched one minute of Charlie Hunnam’s work. I had no idea… [Laughs]… who he was until day one of shooting when we were shooting a kind-of key scene about our relationship, and there was a lot riding on it. Everyone was thinking, “Is this going to work?” It’s one of the main relationships of the heart of the show, and I entered. I had no idea what the hell I was going to do. And then I looked across, and there was another man who had no idea what the hell he was going to do. And I went, “Ahhh, we’re together in this. We both don’t know what to do.” And in that was just love, joy. Yeah, I had the time of my life with Charlie, and I think that’s what translated into the characters. And that’s kind-of the spirit with which we led the entire show. Or at least, I hope it translates because I had the time of my life with that man.

Speaking of life, there’s a quote that comes up near the season’s end. Lin says something to the effect of Shakespeare’s works answering all questions in life. Charlie, I’m bringing up SOA again because that was based upon Hamlet. How accurate do you find the notion that Shakespeare can explain everything?

Charlie: I think the quote is “All of the questions and most of the answers in life can be found in Shakespeare,” right? I don’t know… I like that notion. I have not read Shakespeare as much as I would like at this point. I’ve read, you know, the big titles and seen adaptations, so I’m not unfamiliar with Shakespeare, and obviously, he or they were master writers. So I would subscribe to that.

I like how you say, “They,” but I’m listening.

Charlie: I have friends that are true students of Shakespeare and incredibly well versed in Shakespeare and able to quote at will, and there’s seldom a situation that we’re in that they won’t find an appropriate quote to hammer me over the head with, so my experience with those people does lend me to believe that there’s some truth in that statement.

Shubham: Or that they’re just pretentious wankers.

Charlie: Right. I wouldn’t call you that, Shubham.

Shubham: Oh, you’ve revealed me! No, I absolutely love Shakespeare. I find, as an actor, that he gets my blood pumping when sometimes, it lies as still as a lake. Even when I don’t realize it, he sort-of brings me to life. And I think the questions and answers that Shakespeare deals with are the ones of limitless humanity. And I think when you’re looking at life on that kind of scale and humanity on that scale… that’s kind-of why I’m an actor. That’s why we do what we do, so yeah, I definitely subscribe to that.

Continue reading Press/Interview: Charlie Hunnam And Shubham Saraf Discuss How The Spirit Of Chaos (And One Drunken Night) Fueled ‘Shantaram’

Press: Charlie Hunnam promises his new series ‘Shantaram’ is “radically different” from ‘Sons of Anarchy’

Press: Charlie Hunnam promises his new series ‘Shantaram’ is “radically different” from ‘Sons of Anarchy’

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Don’t expect Hunnam to spend much time on a motorcycle in his first series regular role since the biker drama.

EW.com — Charlie Hunnam knows what you’re thinking about the first photo Apple released last month from his new series Shantaram. In the image, the Sons of Anarchy alum sits perched on a motorcycle, looking very much like his former role as outlaw motorcycle club member Jax Teller on the FX drama. But Hunnam’s new character, fugitive Lin Ford, is nothing like Jax. And Shantaram is nothing like Sons of Anarchy.

“I thought that was very cheeky that Apple released that image as the first image,” Hunnam tells EW with a laugh. “I’m on a motorcycle in the show for approximately two minutes maximum over the course of 12 hours, so I hope people don’t get too excited thinking that this is some sort of Sons of Anarchy in India, because that’s not what we’re delivering. The show is so radically different and the characters are so radically different.”

Hunnam stars in the adaptation of the 2003 international best-selling novel from Australian author Gregory David Roberts about Lin’s adventures in 1980s Bombay after escaping prison. Alone in an unfamiliar city, he falls for an enigmatic and intriguing woman while on the run from his past, and soon must choose between freedom or love, and the complications that come with it.

Shantaram marks Hunnam’s first series regular TV gig since Sons of Anarchy wrapped in 2014, and he’s excited to begin this next phase of his career. “I was really a kid when I started Sons, although that grew into feeling quite proud of some of the work that I did in the later seasons,” he says. “I’m just a different person now. I’m north of 40 now, and I’ve been taking stock of who I am and who I would like to be, and the work that I do is certainly an element of that. I think it was an important step for me to challenge myself in those ways. It was very rewarding to push myself out of my comfort zone with this project — I’ve never worked as hard on anything as I’ve worked on this, so I’m nervous and just really excited to see what the reaction will be.”

Credit: Roland Neveu/Apple TV+

Choosing his first post-Sons series regular role was a big decision, and it’s one that he didn’t take lightly. “I very much enjoy the process of long-form storytelling and the consistency of working with the same cast and the opportunity to play the same character for a long period of time, but when I finished Sons of Anarchy, I needed a break from the rigor of that routine, because it’s pretty arduous shooting television,” he says. “I wanted also to wait until the right thing came along, because it’s such a big commitment. It was in my mind, certainly, to make a return to television if I had the opportunity.”

Continue reading Press: Charlie Hunnam promises his new series ‘Shantaram’ is “radically different” from ‘Sons of Anarchy’

Press: Charlie Hunnam On Choosing Vulnerable Roles, Becoming a Writer and Finding Inspiration in Joe Rogan

Press: Charlie Hunnam On Choosing Vulnerable Roles, Becoming a Writer and Finding Inspiration in Joe Rogan

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GQ.com — It’s startling how often Charlie Hunnam’s character loses in his new movie, Jungleland. Hunnam’s breakthrough role was in Sons of Anarchy, where he played a charming rogue who was often two steps ahead of everyone else. Since then, Hunnam mostly hasn’t strayed far from Jax Teller types—some have been more heroic, like his leading man turn in Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, and others more homicidal, like this year’s Guy Ritchie gangster-fest The Gentlemen. But he’s never been quite as desperate as he is here playing Stanley, a perennially struggling hustler who hides behind a veneer of optimism and bets his entire future on his boxing younger brother, Jack.

Jungleland chronicles the brothers’ cross-country journey to an underground boxing tournament and the tests their relationship faces on the way, with a few crime bosses (Jonathan Majors, John Cullum) thrown in for good measure. Ten years ago, Hunnam would have likely played the sensitive brother with fists of fury, but he says that expectation is exactly what drove him towards the hapless manager instead. Hunnam wants to push into a new phase of his career: He turned 40 in April, and that milestone in combination with quarantine has reoriented his actor’s goals and priorities, and as he talked about them, his excitement was palpable.

When you look at the logline and see ‘Charlie Hunnam boxing movie,’ the immediate expectation is that you’re throwing the punches, not playing a guy who gets knocked out by a civilian dad in a pizzeria. This role is really unlike any I’ve seen you in before. I’m used to you playing characters who are more in control.

Yeah. I mean, you reach a certain age—I’m 40 years old. You stop playing the boxer and you start playing the manager. It’s just the natural cycle of life. I think that there are rhythms in one’s life and career, and things in my late twenties and early thirties that I was working through, certain aspects of my personality that I was interested in exploring through work. And I think [you’re] right. Growing up feeling like I didn’t have a lot of control and —I was a sensitive guy in a really tough environment. And so that created a bit of trauma and a little bit of self-loathing and I wanted to explore that and work through it in some of the characters that I was playing. But, thankfully I’ve worked through that and those types of character are just not quite as interesting to me anymore.

So what interested you about Stanley?

The environment that we were living in at the time that [Jungleland] got offered to me, where there was a lot of emphasis being put on toxic masculinity, I thought that there was just something really beautiful to explore about the genesis of where that comes from, men’s inability to be vulnerable with each other or to express love. Really, this whole film is about these two guys who desperately love each other. And, that gets expressed in wrong, inelegant ways.

There were several different elements of it. First and foremost, it’s always just the quality of the writing. [Stanley is] a character that I hadn’t seen very much and I thought it really just felt fresh and exciting. And then, there was something really beautiful and tender about their relationship and the clear love that these two men had for each other. Obviously there’s a lovely, traditional love story between the Jessica Barden and Jack O’Connell characters. But to me when I read it, I felt like the most central love story was really between these two brothers.

And to go back to what we were saying: Maybe I’ve been wearing a mask a little bit in some of the characters that I’ve been playing in my twenties and early thirties and there was just something very tragic and vulnerable about this family that I was really attracted to. It felt like there was more opportunity to just be a little bit more vulnerable, a little bit more raw.

Vulnerability and toxic masculinity are definitely more prevalent in this movie, but I feel like a lot of your past roles, even the action stuff like Sons of Anarchy, always made time to engage with those things.

I’m a relatively sensitive guy and take storytelling very seriously. I’m always looking for the opportunity in my work to try to find some truth. And that is really where acting gets exciting. I mean, with Sons of Anarchy, that was a guy who, had he been born into a different environment, would have had the potential to be a doctor, a photographer or a writer. There was something sensitive and very present about him and his own emotional awareness.

To a certain degree you have these aspirations to imbue characters with certain traits. But the material dictates it. And so sometimes in a show like Sons, you have to fight against the tides to try to get those moments in. That’s not exactly true because Kurt [Sutter] is a sensitive guy too and he was looking for those moments. But, you have to make a character as well-rounded as possible, so that he feels like a human being, even in a heightened environment like Sons.

What was your mindset going into this new chapter of your life, as you turn 40? How are you making choices now?

Well, one of the main things that I’m doing in my career right now is transitioning much more into writing and producing, which has been an aspiration of mine for many years. And I’ve been trying to do that in a very concentrated way, in the last five years. But there’s only so many hours in the day. And I realized that with all of the good intentions, there was just a reality to the bandwidth that I have on any given day.

In terms of specifically the things I want to explore, it’s really, really varied. And it’s often sort of story-specific. But just generally I’m very, very excited about writing. I’ve spent these last six to eight months writing five hours a week. I wrote a screenplay and I wrote a television show, a six-part television show. And right now I’m in the middle of writing a miniseries.

I’m creating opportunities for myself to act within that, but it’s funny—you get on this trajectory and one gets known for one’s work and it’s very easy for people to just say, ‘okay, we need a tough guy who can also be sensitive. Let’s see if Hunnam is interested.’ And it does take a very concentrated effort to recognize that and try to break out of it. So the joy of writing is that I know what’s in my heart and I also have a sense of what I will be able to do as an actor. I’ve not really been writing myself any tough guys and [instead] writing characters that are, I suppose, reflective of where I am in my life. They’re in that midpoint of life and career and wondering, ‘is this manifesting in exactly the way I hoped? And if not, what steps can be taken to course-correct and to arrive at the promised land?’

Continue reading Press: Charlie Hunnam On Choosing Vulnerable Roles, Becoming a Writer and Finding Inspiration in Joe Rogan