NYCC 2017 Panel Recap: ‘Sons Of Anarchy’ With Ryan Hurst And Theo Rossi

On Saturday afternoon, Ryan Hurst and Theo Rossi played host to a Sons of Anarchy centric panel at New York Comic Con.

The conversation ranged from letting go to their characters and the show to some of their favorite moments from working on the series.

“You spend so much time, with the exception of movie, when you’re doing a television show you grow this character if you get the luxury of playing a character for 5 to 7 years…” Hurst said. “When it’s over, there’s a mourning period. Everybody goes ‘You ripped my heart when Opie died!’ Well, it ripped my heart out, too! There’s definitely a detox period.”

“There was a big thing where Charlie and a bunch of the guys got together and they shaved my beard,” Hurst said. “They cut my beard and then they shaved it… With a samurai sword. It’s good to infuse a little ritual.”

The goodbye to Sons of Anarchy process was a little different for Rossi who points out he was a little less involved.

“Especially for Sons, playing a very different character right now and in the middle of it with Luke Cage, (obviously shades is a little different this year…very violent) when you do a TV show as Ryan said, I wa sa perpetual guest star… It’s hard not to make it take you over.”

“In my mind, they were the only two good guys on the show,” Rossi said. “I think that’s why the loss of them affected so many people.”

The panel is opened to audience questions.

Continued

A fan asks how they picked their roles following Sons…

“For me it was to play things that are so completely opposite, to try to attract characters that are so different,” Rossi said. “The characters I’ve played are so different. The set of Luke Cage is so different than that.”

“For me, it was just the choice of roles,” Hurst said. He went on to play an autistic character on Kingdom X. “Variety is the spice of life. You try to pick things that are gonna inspire you and you’ve gotta do your best.”

Kyle from Long Island says half way through the show, Rossi’s character became the main story character. How did he work with so much dramatic acting and moments?

“I think I got super lucky that I got to play like five different characters in one show,” Rossi said. “It was going into deep dark places that a lot of people don’t want to go to. That character was something where you couldn’t be…I loved it. The crazier, the more intense, go as far as you can go. That’s my goal in anything. I want to go absolutely as far.”

“I have no interest in playing characters between the lines,” Rossi said. “The hardest thing out of all of it, was being in a place where he wanted to take his own life. You have to go to a very different place…That moment, which I think was Season 4, was the toughest to shoot. If it wasn’t believable to me, it wasn’t gonna be believable to anybody who was watching.”

Rossi says watching Hurst’s character die, going through that, being at the funeral all helped fuel his performance.

“It’s easy to get tied up in this stuff,” Hurst said. “It’s a matter of how dedicated you are to your craft.”

Hurst gives props to Rossi who viewed part of his character’s role as “pathetic” and taking it and making it an incredible performance. Rossi chimes in and adds you can’t get caught up in fandom or what people might think of what you’re doing.

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How did they go home at the end of the night after such intense work on set, a fan asks.

“Whenever a character is like tortured, it’s actually really easy to walk away from that stuff,” Hurst said. “As an actor, you love those types of scenes and those storylines where it’s really dramatic…It’s when one scene doesn’t quite work, then you go home wondering, ‘Did that work?’”

“Some of the most intense stuff has been easier and only because it’s so intense and sometimes os ludacris and some just so whatever…you just have to kind of stay within your lane of your character but it’s a process with anything. Very different when you do it for seven years, five years, whatever it is,” Rossi explained.

“Actors in general are not the greatest people,” Rossi said. “But on this show, this was one where the second they called cut you’re like, ‘I’m out of here.’ …This show was, ‘Where are we going after it? What are we doing after it? Where are we going this weekend?’”

“We would ride up on motorcycles to bars and people were like, ‘Are they filming?’” Rossi said.

Hurst tells a story about the cast rolling up to a Variety party on motorcycles and it was a record-scratch moment where everyone looked at them like they’re crazy. Rossi compares it to Norman Reedus and The Walking Dead cast who are very tightly knit. 

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Rossi and Hurst are asked about favorite scenes from the show.

Hurst recalls a moment which saw Opie and Jax on the porch smoking which had no dialogue, just a moment with the characters for about 20 seconds. Rossi recalls a Season 3 moment where a car stalled. He loved the finale that year, in general. 

When did they realize they wanted to make acting a career?

“Real early on, my mother is an actress, my father is an actor, and my step dad is a writer, but real early on once you start to understand the role that an actor plays in society, it’s injecting light into the human condition…” Hurst started. “To be able to be a part of that, to be able to serve the community in which you live with those stories…it becomes a way not just to make a living but also to live your life.”

During the next question, Rossi promises, “You haven’t seen anything yet,” for his Shades character on Luke Cage. “Truly, a complete and utter… what I was able to do from season 4 to 7 in Sons is happening in 13 episodes. He’s so manipulative and so devious and at the same time there’s so much more to him…With Shades, it’s like, ‘I have no idea what’s about to happen.’”

“I’m doing things now that I’ve never done before,” Rossi said.

How do they turn up or down the intensity?

“The writers and the creators have a certain vision for the character,” Hurst said. “The actor is gonna bring something to the character they didn’t see.” 

A fan asks Rossi how he got himself to the place for Juice’s suicidal scenes and questions if he has had those types of thoughts himself.

“You can deny it to anybody else but everybody has… That’s human. We all have every single thought comes into our head. I’ve been lucky enough… I got into this racket late, acting, I had a very different life before. I started as a kid who had his face in a pad drawing all day. I would just draw comic book characters, mainly the Punisher…and at the same time I’m growing up living a life in New York City that’s very fast-paced…”

Will Rossi or Hurst be involved with Mayans M.C.?

“I don’t think we’re around,” Rossi said.

“We’re all dead!” Hurst said.

“I gotta be honest, I have no idea, I’m so out of the loop on it,” Rossi said. “I’m really out of the loop on what’s going on with that show.”

Rossi says a spinoff based on Jax’s journal would be “a good idea” but the timeline in the real world doesn’t lend itself to that. “I’m all for a prequel. If there’s a petition, tweet me!”