Although the tales depicted in Sons of Anarchy are made up, Charlie Hunnam’s role was based on a real-life biker the actor encountered while getting ready to play Jax Teller. In Kurt Sutter’s TV show Sons of Anarchy from 2008, viewers went to the town of Charming to meet a motorcycle club. Sons of Anarchy was favourably welcomed by critics from the start, who praised the tone, topics, and acting of the main actors. The show ran for a total of seven seasons before ending in 2014.
The television series Sons of Anarchy centres on Jackson “Jax” Teller (Charlie Hunnam), the vice president of the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle gang in the made-up town of Charming, California. The series’ events begin when Jax discovers a manifesto written by his late father, John Teller, who was one of the MC’s original members and expressed his goals and vision for the group. These were quite different from those of Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman), the club’s current president and Jax’s stepfather, causing Jax to reflect on his life’s direction, his place in the club, his relationships, his family, and more. Although Sons of Anarchy presents fictional tales, it drew heavily on real-life motorcycle groups and their culture. Even Hunnam was influenced by one particular biker.
From the beginning to the finish, Jax Teller served as the show’s protagonist. Throughout the course of the series, he transitioned from being SAMCRO’s hope to change their history and lead them down a new road to the person who nearly destroyed the club he grew up in. Although Charlie Hunnam’s Sons of Anarchy character Jax was heavily based around a genuine biker he met in several important respects, Jax’s story isn’t based on that of a real-life person and it borrows many features from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a confirmed inspiration for the show. When The Huffington Post asked Hunnam if he had any experience with real motorcycle clubs, he said that he had spent a lot of time with one particular club during Sons of Anarchy’s first rehearsal period, where he had met the real Jax Teller.
Hunnam Based Jax On A Young Oakland Biker With A Similarly Tragic Fate
Before Sons of Anarchy season 1 began filming, Hunnam claimed he visited Oakland and spent time with “a pretty well-known club that have a presence in Oakland,” which was sufficient for him to gain a sense of what it’s like to be a motorcycle club member. When he arrived, he met a 22-year-old clubgoer who Hunnam claims “was Jax Teller.” His father was a member of the club and had been for his whole life, making him “the heir apparent.” Hunnam continued by saying the nameless motorcyclist was like “an old school outlaw, cowboy, and gunslinger” in the present day and had “an extraordinary presence about him.” Sadly, the young motorcyclist shared Jax Teller’s destiny because, according to Hunnam, he passed within a week after leaving Oakland. His necklace was passed down to Hunnam, who keeps it as a memento of the deceased. The biker had such an influence on the actor that everything about Jax, including the pants and shoes he wore and his demeanour, was modelled after him.
It’s both tragic and fascinating that Jax and his real-life counterpart met the same destiny since Jax Teller planned their deaths in the series finale. Jax was based on a real-life biker from Oakland, but his path was an original plot with Shakespearean overtones. It’s difficult to imagine how different Jax would have been from Sons of Anarchy if he had never met the kid biker, but that encounter undoubtedly gave Jax a lot more realism and passion.
SOA Cast Real Hells Angels In The Show To Add Authenticity
In order to maintain the show’s authenticity, numerous actual members of the motorcycle organisation Hells Angels were cast as Jax Teller, a character played by Charlie Hunnam in Sons of Anarchy. Over the course of the show’s seven seasons, David Labrava, Rusty Coones, Chuck Zito, and Ralph “Sonny” Barger all appeared in Sons of Anarchy in roles of varied prominence. This is not only a cute little tidbit about the series, but it also demonstrates how serious Sons of Anarchy is about authentically portraying the lives of motorcycle club members. Strong examples of this commitment to authenticity are Charlie Hunnam’s tribute to the real biker he met and the casting of Hells Angels on Sons of Anarchy.
