Katey Sagal plays one tough mother in 'Sons of Anarchy'

Who's the boss? Gemma (Katey Sagal) and Clay (Ron Perlman) work it out.

Gemma is put through the ringer in the premiere, and according to Sagal, what happens to her is the catalyst for the entire season's emotional arc. Gemma makes a great sacrifice for her son, Jax (Charlie Hunnam), her husband, Clay (Ron Perlman), and the club that she considers her family. It's a position with which Sagal, a mother of three and wife of "SOA" creator Kurt Sutter, can identify.

"Family's extremely important to me," she said in describing how much of her personality exists in Gemma. "I think you get some of [my] loyalty and commitment ... I'm not pushed to those kind of limits. But you know, I'd think twice before crossing my kids. I might get in your face."

Sagal and I talked more about Gemma's rough ride this season, what's going on with "Futurama" and another mother she's portrayed, Peg Bundy. I've put the real spoilery stuff at the bottom of the post, and it's labeled.

Hi Katey, everything is going well?
Oh, yeah. Everything is good. We're almost done shooting the season and very exciting.

"SOA" seems to be ramped up this season. It seems like the stakes are higher and everything is just sort of--there's like a bigger umph or something.
Yeah. It's pretty umphy.

I have to ask, is that you singing in the second episode?
Yes. That is me.

It's awesome. I'm glad everyone gets to hear you sing. They should put something on the credits so people know.
I know. They probably should, but I guess--let the fans guess.

How is it working with your husband?
Oh, it's really great. First of all, I have a lot of respect for what he does. Right now we're in crunch time so I don't get to see him as much as I like to see him because he's just buried. He's writing and editing and sweetening. This is like the most intense time, this next month or so. It's great because we work on the same lot so we can actually see each other at work. I'm kind of like honored to be in his project. I just think he's such a talented guy.

Has he ever written anything for Gemma that you wanted to change or that you didn't agree with, that you didn't feel was right?
No. No, there's really not. I've been really happy with all of it. It's like if I have a question, he explains to me the bigger picture of it all. I haven't even had any discomfort. It just helps me to understand it better.

Do you like Gemma?
Yes, I do. I like Gemma. I find her fascinating. This is a woman who lives with a certain amount of denial, which I think is always a fascinating thing. She's very direct, but she doesn't miss a trick. She's somewhat duplicitous but at the same time what you see is what you get. She always has sort of a bigger picture. She's very queen like. This is her little kingdom and she wants to make sure everything is in place. So I find her fascinating, yeah.

Do you think that even if maybe she goes about doing something in a less than kind way that it's all probably the right thing to do?
Well, she has a different set of morals; a different set of rules, which they all kind of do. It's sort of that survivor mentality. To me, all these people come from displaced backgrounds. They are like scrappers. They have to get by on their wits, or that's what they've decided for themselves. The things does she's motivated to do out of necessity, out of love and loyalty. We all just have different ways and means of going about things.

That's hers. I don't judge her. I think to play a character like that, you have to put yourself in a whole different frame of mind in terms of--she's not me. She's not my moral compass. But what she does makes sense to her.

You've made three moms famous: Peg Bundy on "Married with Children," Cate Hennessy on "8 Simple Rules" and now Gemma. It's easy to tell how they're different, but what are their similarities do you think?
Well, they definitely love their children. Even Peg Bundy, in that kind of whacky way. What I always like to say about the Bundys is for as messed up as they were, they stayed together. It was not like a family that was ever going to fall apart or get a divorce. That was all a very tongue-in-cheek kind of depiction of a family. She was loyal to her family. Cate Hennessey definitely [was]. She was the more typical soccer mom type. Gemma, too, [has the] same kind of loyalty to her family. I think those are the similarities. I think they all have different ways and means of going about things, but I think they were all kind of tough broads in a weird way.

Gemma seems to be the toughest broad.
Yeah. She's the toughest.

There are all kinds of tough women on cable TV these days, but I don't think that I would bet against Gemma.
No. It's interesting when you're the woman in a man's world. That's really what these women are who live in that [biker] world. So there's some soft and fuzzy, but not much.

You have some guest stars this season with Tom Arnold, Adam Arkin and Henry Rollins.
I think the casting call across the board of our show has been really interesting and really good. Adam Arkin, to me, was like just sort of against type really of what you'd see as a white supremacist. That's what makes it so interesting. Henry Rollins is just super cool. That was a great call, too, to bring him in. Tom Arnold ... is like the sleazy porn guy, which I thought that was good, too.

ON "LOST":

Are we going to see Helen at the end of "Lost" next spring?
You know, they've not called me. I would love it if they would; in fact, I had some guy I met at the TCA and he was supposed to have lunch the next day with ["Lost" bosses] Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton Cuse. I said, "Ask them!" Because I get asked all the time, "Why doesn't Helen come back?" I have the same question. The last time we saw Helen was at her gravesite.

So she could [come back.] I love "Lost." And I love that all the dead people come back on the island. So maybe she could but they have not called me yet, so I am not holding out too high hope.

ON "FUTURAMA":

Has the salary issue for everyone worked itself out?
All worked out. We started last week and we had our first table read and our first recording. Everybody is very happy to be back.

That's good. So there are no hard feelings or anything?
Oh, no. All that stuff is just business. It's just what you go through.

Were you surprised they brought it back?
No, I'm never surprised. You know, they brought "Futurama" back from the dead several times. It has the most unbelievably loyal fan base. Like if you go to Comic-Con we're like rock stars at Comic-Con. The Internet and just the DVD sales. It's got a huge fan base and that's why we keep coming back because it's undeniable. So every time they're writing the last episode, it's just sort of like well maybe it's the last episode. So I'm never surprised that it comes back. Plus it's an amazingly written show. It's super smart, super beautiful to watch, it's great animation.

It's just has that life about it. There are great stories. It's the future so you can just kind of limit list of what you can do.

SPOILER WARNING: In the following section, Sagal and I chat about the shocking events of the first episode. Come back after you watch.

Let's talk about Gemma. She has a rough time this season.
Yeah. She really does. I think that it's sort of the undoing of [the club] and she takes a really interesting journey because of all that. Once again, she's protecting her family, too. That's her main purpose and goal is to make sure her family is OK. Even at the expense of herself. So she's once again doing that.

She makes the biggest, I don't know if you call it sacrifice, but there's just no way. You know?
Well you know it's true of motherhood, I must tell you. Being a mother myself, it's loaded with self-sacrifice. I don't know if that's just this is how the planet designs it, but motherhood is that way. She is ultimately the mother of all those guys.

There's an interesting line someone says about the club, that they're all a bunch of little boys and if you mess with the matriarch then you'll get them all.
Yes, keep watching. You will see. What happens to Gemma is the catalyst for the whole emotional arc for everybody for the whole season. So you kind of follow where that leads us, because in this season you also have the club coming apart. It's all about alliances and who's on whose side and everybody's got these secrets, which is really interesting. You'll see how it all kind of makes sense toward the end. It's really tied up. All of it leads somewhere.

I love the tidbit we get from the Sheriff Unser. He says that Gemma left town at 16 and came back with a motorcycle club and a husband. He's sort of identifying her as the boss really.
Well, because Charming is her hometown. So she and Unser, the older sheriff, they are from this town. Gemma brought the club back; she brought them back with her. This is why they live in this town.

That's such a cool little sneak peak of her background and--
Yeah. Of the mythology, I know.

Loyalty does seem to be the theme. The Jax and Clay clash is a big deal. Gemma is very loyal to both of those guys, her son and her husband. Who would she choose if she had to, in your mind?
Well, you know, it's an interesting dilemma because Clay is not just Clay. Clay also represents the club. Jax represents the club, but in sort of a different kind of way. A mother's loyalty to her son, which is blood loyalty, is really a hard thing to deny. I really don't know that there is a clear-cut answer to that. I know you'd like one, but I don't know that there is a clear-cut answer to that. She is certainly bonded to her son; she's bonded to the club also. So that is her lifestyle; that is her survival. That's how she defines herself. So I don't know. I can't really answer that.

All right. But she does look at her first husband's book for comfort. Is she eventually going to come around to his way of thinking? Or did she just think that she might find something for herself?
I think that what she does it's sort of out of a moment of confusion in trying to figure out what her son is reading and trying to figure out if it makes any sense and trying to--everything is just sort of upside down. I think that the deal with [first hubby] John Teller was really that she sees a lot of John Teller in Jax, which is that sort of he's more philosophical by nature. He asks a lot of questions. I think Gemma's maternal instinct wants to protect him from asking too many questions. Do you know what I mean?

So her discovering the manuscript is I think more about trying to figure out exactly what it says and what does that mean for her son. It's kind of vague. Or actually not vague, it's multi-layered is what I would say.

The closing scene from the first episode is really shocking. How difficult is that to film?
Well, you know, when you do something like that, it's very technical. Everybody makes you feel really safe. Like we went to the set of that days before we shot it just so that we could sort of be on the set and loosely walk it, see where we were. We have a very close [group]. Everybody's taking risks, everybody's doing stuff that's kind of out there. So the crew is a kind of as much involved as we are. It's just a really safe protected environment.

Anytime you do something that it's kind of like dancing in a weird way. There's choreography to it. Then we just jumped in and did our work.

It was hard to watch, but I have to say that at that moment when you kicked the guy, I was cheering. I was up, I was down, and then the following episodes when you're following Henry Rollins around, I was seriously shouting, "Shoot him!" I kind of creeped myself out being so pro-violence.
Wow. Cool. We all have those basic instincts going. It's interesting. To be violated, is something that nobody likes.

Were you concerned at all when you read that plot line? I know a lot of times when you have a scene like that you might get some blow back, people, "Oh, they're just doing that to be gratuitous."
I pretty much trust Kurt's take on things. As he explained it to me, and you don't know yet because you haven't seen it all, it completely sets up the emotional arc for the entire season and for everybody's journey. It makes sense. There is nothing really gratuitous about that. So once that was explained to me, it's just part of the story--the bigger story that he's trying to tell. It made sense to me.

I guess part of the really cool things about being on this cable network because the stories are dark, so people that are going to tune in--you got to know you're not watching ABC Family. So you're getting to tell the kind of stories which are dark and violent and gritty, and that's what it is. I wasn't too worried about it.