Press: Charlie Hunnam on ‘Jungleland,’ the Status of ‘Shantaram,’ & Why He Didn’t Do ‘Pacific Rim 2’

Press: Charlie Hunnam on ‘Jungleland,’ the Status of ‘Shantaram,’ & Why He Didn’t Do ‘Pacific Rim 2’

Collider.com — During this in-depth 1-on-1 chat with Collider, Hunnam tells us why he was drawn to playing Stanley, what it was like to get to know and work with O’Connell, and why he’s already looking to work with Winkler again. He also talked about the status of his Apple TV+ series Shantaram, whether he’d do another long-running TV show like Sons of Anarchy, whether he’s involved with the Pacific Rim Netflix anime series, and much more.

COLLIDER: What was it about Jungleland that drew you in? Was it the story, was it the character, was it the relationship between these brothers, or was it all of that?

CHARLIE HUNNAM: It’s a testament to Max [Winkler]’s great writing but it just felt like a fresh character, in terms of general film history. I didn’t feel like I’d seen a character like Stanley portrayed too many times but it was also specifically a very fresh character for me. Although there’s a lot of color and a heightened sensibility to the film (or at least more so on the page than the final results), it was clear that Max was really interested in exploring something specific about the way in which people, but men in particular, interact with each other. It was just very clear that, although there was the relationship with the love story between Jess Barden and Jack O’Connell’s characters, the central love story was between these two brothers and their abiding deep sense of loyalty and love that they have for each other, and their absolute inability to express it and demonstrate it, in any way that might mitigate some of the inevitable, impending catastrophe that was clearly on the horizon. I came from a very, very working-class, tough environment where men didn’t really interact with each other in a way that I found deeply satisfying. So there was something about that, that felt personal to me, and that I was interested in exploring.

When you read a script, in general, how quickly do you typically know when it’s something that you want to do and that you can bring something to, and how quickly did you know when reading this?

HUNNAM: Immediately. It’s a two-step process for me. I’ve read so many scripts, at this point, that I just know right away — really within the first few pages — if the quality of the writing is there or if you can feel that it’s gonna be thematically resonant. That immediately became clear but I wasn’t familiar with Max’s work. So the second threshold is always having faith and excitement and being inspired by the director. I went and watched his film Flower, which I thought was really, really unique and frisky. I felt he had a voice that I was excited about and the performances in Flower are very, very good. Obviously, so much of an actor’s performance is going to be predicated on the way the director handles you on set, and then handles the raw material once they get into the edit room.

So, both of those things in conjunction made it a no-brainer immediately. I read the script and watched the film, over the course of one day, and then calls and said, “I wanna meet with Max,” and told him in the room, “I wanna do this movie.” It was a pretty easy process, in that regard.

Was there a specific point where you went from being someone who was excited just to get a script to read, to being able to tell pretty quickly if it wasn’t something that you would want to do?

HUNNAM: Yeah. There have been many steps along the process to get to where I am now and I can see that there are many steps ahead of me and I would like to hopefully be able to cross several more thresholds to get to where I would optimally like to be as a performer and as part of a filmmaking team, but yeah, definitely. What I’m realizing now is how long it took for me to have the self-belief to advocate for myself and say, “I’m only gonna align myself with a certain caliber of people.”

It’s an ever-evolving scale but I feel very fortunate that I’m in the position that I’m in now, where I’m getting not only good quality material with good directors but also a diversity of roles. People are not just seeing me as a sensitive tough guy. They’re actually seeing that I have the capacity to do other things, too, which is really heartening and something that is becoming increasingly important to me. I went through a process of dealing with some personal shit that I had to go through and dealing with trauma from childhood through work. I was feeling scared and like a sensitive kid in a tough environment, and it created a lot of self-loathing, so I decided that I wanted to play all of these tough guys for a long time, to get past this trauma and this negative self-image that I’d created for myself from my childhood. I realize now that I’ve exercised those demons and don’t need to do that anymore, and I’m not really interested in doing that anymore.

As you have started to produce and write things for yourself, does that also change your perspective on how you read something or what you want to do?

HUNNAM: Yeah. It’s a bit cerebral but this year has been incredibly impactful for me. I want to preface that I, by no means, want to sound like anything that’s happened this year is a positive thing because it’s obviously been incredibly tough for everybody, but the isolation has afforded me the opportunity to sit down and do what I have come to term from the experience of doing it as my work, in a way that I’ve never really felt in the past. I’ve written, for the last seven months, 85 hours a week, and I’ve not taken a day off where I haven’t written a minimum of 12 hours a day. I wrote a six-part TV show, I wrote a film, and I’m now in the process of outlining a four-part miniseries. I’ve been really immersed in what I feel like is my career 2.0, and it really has been a deeply satisfying experience, in the clearest way I can experience it. I feel like truly, for the first time, that I’m doing my work.

Continue reading Press: Charlie Hunnam on ‘Jungleland,’ the Status of ‘Shantaram,’ & Why He Didn’t Do ‘Pacific Rim 2’

Press: Charlie Hunnam Reflects on the Impact of ‘Sons of Anarchy’ 12 Years Later: “It Gave Me a Career”

Press: Charlie Hunnam Reflects on the Impact of ‘Sons of Anarchy’ 12 Years Later: “It Gave Me a Career”

People.com — Charlie Hunnam is reflecting on Sons of Anarchy’s impact over a decade after the series premiered.

Speaking to PEOPLE ahead of the release of his new film Jungleland, the 40-year-old actor opened up about how the hit FX drama launched his career.

“Well, frankly, it gave me a career,” Hunnam says. “And it gave me the ability to have confidence that I was going to be able to make [acting] work as a lifelong career.”

Hunnam starred as Jax Teller in the motorcycle gang show, which chronicled the lives of a close-knit motorcycle club that operated in a fictional Californian town. The series also starred Katey Sagal, Tommy Flanagan and Ron Perlman.

Looking back at his time on the show that made him a household name, the Newcastle, England native says it was almost like a college experience for him.

“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.”

“And where I cultivated a lot of that skill set was going to work and shooting 10 pages a day on Sons of Anarchy for seven years,” he continues. “I feel like that was my college days.”

Hunnam adds: “I went in knowing very little about the process of acting and came out knowing a little bit more.”

Now, six years after the series concluded, Hunnam says he’s often asked whether or not he would ever reprise his most famous role. But “I would never, ever put that cut back on,” he says. “I would never put his 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.”

“He’s dead now,” he adds. “So there would be no ever bringing him back … When he died, he died.”

These days, Hunnam is now enjoying life and taking things day by day amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with a renewed focus on creativity.

“I’ve been writing a great deal, which has been something that I’ve been sort of doing tangentially to my acting career for quite a while,” he says. “I’ve been writing 85 hours a week for the last seven months.”

Next up, in addition to Jungleland, Hunnam will head back to television screens with the previously announced series, Shantaram. And despite his many movie undertakings since the end of Sons of Anarchy, the actor notes that he does prefer TV roles over film ones.

“I really like long-form storytelling,” he says. “The experience of working with a group of actors for a long period of time is really, really exciting and rewarding.”

Jungleland opens in select theaters on Friday and hits video on demand platforms on Tuesday.

Press: ‘Jungleland’ Co-Star Jack O’Connell on Working with Charlie

Press: ‘Jungleland’ Co-Star Jack O’Connell on Working with Charlie

In a recent interview with Men’s Journal, Charlie’s ‘Jungleland‘ co-star Jack O’Connell spoke about what it was like working with Charlie while filming and their relationship. You can check out what Jack had to say below:

What was it like working with Charlie Hunnam?

Charlie is a great collaborator. When you’re playing a brother, it’s always best to feel like you have an open channel with the other person. I don’t have a brother, so I had to guess at it, but I really wanted that feeling that there was nothing off-limits between us. That’s what Charlie and I had. I was really glad he was the one I got to do it with.

Did you guys train together at all?

I believe you have to spend time together off set if you want [the chemistry] to look good on the camera. We made sure to spend some good time together. Charlie is a jiu-jitsu guy, so every time we would walk into the gym, he would start rolling immediately, trying to get some holds on me. But I had to ask him to stand up for starters at least. [Laughs]. I don’t mind taking it to the ground, but I don’t want to step into his realm right off the bat.

Source: MensJournal.com

Press: Charlie Hunnam Says He Is ‘100 Percent’ Open to Playing James Bond: I Would Be ‘Flattered’

People.com — The name’s Hunnam. Charlie Hunnam.

While speaking to PEOPLE ahead of the release of his new film Jungleland, the 40-year-old actor opened up about future roles that he is interested in taking on and whether or not James Bond happens to be one of them.

Asked if he would ever be open to donning Bond’s tuxedo someday in the future, the Sons of Anarchy star says, “100 percent.”

“I would be so flattered and honored to be considered to play James Bond as an Englishman,” he adds. “But my intuition tells me that I shouldn’t be waiting for that phone call to come. I think there are many people ahead of me on that list.”

The actor characterized any rumors of him portraying the ever-popular spy as “external chatter,” adding it is sweet that fans want to see him take on the role that several other actors before him have — including the late Sean Connery.

“It’s very flattering sort of fan dialogue,” he says, before noting that there’s no truth to the rumors. “Nobody’s ever, on a professional level from within the industry, brought that up to me,” he explains.

Still, he encourages fans to keep associating his name with the role, as he says sometimes fans do play a role in helping to get actors cast to play certain characters.

“As much as people want to talk about me playing James Bond, please continue,” he shares. “Maybe that’s the genesis of these things. Maybe fan chatter leads to industry people actually talking about it in a more serious way.”

Even if he doesn’t come to play Bond one day in the future, Hunnam does have an actor in mind that could take over the mantle from Daniel Craig, who said that the upcoming Bond flick, No Time to Die, will be his last.

Hunnam tells PEOPLE Tom Hardy would make for a great spy.

“The person that I hear about in that conversation is Tom Hardy,” the actor says. “I hear that he’s really the front runner [to play James Bond next].”

He adds: “I think that would be sensational. I’m an enormous Tom Hardy fan so I would love to see him as James Bond.”

Continue reading Press: Charlie Hunnam Says He Is ‘100 Percent’ Open to Playing James Bond: I Would Be ‘Flattered’