They give a reason why?
I suspect his character portrayal was exactly like his Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul character.
Mayans MC: Sons Of Anarchy Sequel
- Thread starter GAMETHEORY
- Start date
They give a reason why?
I suspect his character portrayal was exactly like his Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul character.
It begins!!!
LAwd please let this be good....
LAwd please let this be good....
Nice show so far.
7 minutes in and I’m all ready all in
FX+
Why!!!
Why!!!
Old boy has got to be undercover
The hardest thing about this show is Trying not to view it like Sons of anarchy.... I’m sitting here trying to see who is going to be the CLAY
yeah...wtf is FX anyway????
these networks gonna f*ck around and destroy themselves with all these apps
like the music industry did with Napster.
Oh shit.. Robert Patrick...
Damn this Mr. inBetween show looks good
IM not paying 5.99 for shit that I can get free online or from jacking someone comcast... which is what I’m doing now.
Shit just foot extremely interesting.... I love the small details.
FIRst sons of anarchy moment of the night.
Oh shit... what if his girl is with the cartel dude
yeah i had a feelin that he was tappin that.
didnt know that she had his baby tho. that shit gonna hurt every time ole boy look at em.....lol
Oh shit... I knew it...
Gawd damn... gawd damn
Gawd damn... gawd damn
I knew there had to be some Sons like fucked Up shit somewhere....
Now shit got real...
I think we know who the rebel chick is..
It’s lazy writing but I’ll allow it..
I’m loving what I’m seeing so far.
It’s lazy writing but I’ll allow it..
I’m loving what I’m seeing so far.
Oh shit I knew it.. they are working with them.
Well gawd damn... shit got real.
Well gawd damn... shit got real.
Shit got extra real....
Now ol boy is legit caught up in the middle...
I’m all the way in on this!!!
Now ol boy is legit caught up in the middle...
I’m all the way in on this!!!
Oh nooooo... they aren’t going to do what I think they are going to do.
What about the Trump tight show called sons of bitches?
Last edited:
interesting reviews are GENERALLY positive
but the "whiter" fans already hate it.
but the "whiter" fans already hate it.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/09/04/mayans-mc-series-premiere-review-perrooc
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/arts/television/mayans-mc-fx-review.html
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-mayans-mc-review-20180904-story.html
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/mayans-mc-review-715393/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/arts/television/mayans-mc-fx-review.html
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-mayans-mc-review-20180904-story.html
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/mayans-mc-review-715393/
‘Mayans M.C.’ Review: ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Spin-off Is a Weaker Retread
Creator Kurt Sutter’s latest effort feels a lot like his biggest hit — with all of the violence and none of the compelling characters
By
ALAN SEPINWALL
JD Pardo stars as EZ Reyes in 'Mayans M.C.'
Prashant Gupta/FX
Sons of Anarchy was one of the biggest hits in the history of FX. The outlaw biker club drama’s second season was a classic. Katey Sagal was annually one of the Emmys’ most egregious snubs, and the show had a deep ensemble of actors like Charlie Hunnam, Maggie Siff, Ryan Hurst and Jimmy Smits to elevate what creator Kurt Sutter once described as “bloody pulp fiction with highly complex characters.”
Sons was also given to excess in almost every way: more plot twists, more graphic torture, more minutes per episode. (It, probably more than any other recent series, is responsible for the trend of drama episodes routinely creeping past the one-hour mark.) Just more more more, until it became too exhausting to watch. By the time Jax Teller made his final ride, even many die-hard SAMCRO fans had had enough.
After a misfire with the medieval fantasy The Bastard Executioner, Sutter has returned to familiar territory with Mayans M.C., a spin-off (co-created by Elgin James) set in the Sons universe, but focusing on a different club’s charter, located on the California/Mexico border.
The show (debuts September 4) is a chance to revisit the kind of material that Sutter does best, but with a clean slate of characters and plot, rather than the people and scenarios he wrung dry on Sons. But the two episodes provided for review are a disappointment, featuring many of the original series’ weaknesses without its greatest strengths.
Our antihero this time out is Ezekiel “EZ” Reyes (JD Pardo), a Mayans prospect who was once a promising college student (and still has a photographic memory, which becomes a handy plot device) before going to prison for killing a cop. Paroled after his victim was exposed as crooked, he teams up with big brother Angel (Clayton Cardenas) in the Mayans, much to the concern of their butcher father Felipe (Edward James Olmos). We get occasional glimpses of Emilio Rivera as Marcus Alvarez, who runs the Mayans’ Oakland charter and was a Sons staple, but this group down by the border is led by Michael Irby’s Bishop, struggling to keep the group independent of cartel kingpin Miguel Galindo (Danny Pino), who pays the Mayans to smuggle his drugs.
It’s a new setting (the Mayans even have a tunnel that allows them clandestine passage back and forth under the border) and mostly new characters, but it all feels pretty familiar. The pilot (which, true to form, runs 67 minutes without commercials) features three major plot twists, at least two of which will be obvious way ahead of time to anyone who watched the parent show (or, really, any cable or streaming drama of the last 20 years). Each of them places characters in situations that should be narratively unsustainable, but based on how Sons was plotted, everyone will be allowed to dangle on the end of their various metaphorical nooses for years. The early episodes also feature the obligatory helpings of graphic torture, child abductions, endless motorcycle chases and shootouts. (Sons rarely did action well, particularly for how often and how lengthy those sequences were; Mayans isn’t an improvement.)
But all of that comes with your admission to a Sutter motorcycle club show, even if most of it’s no more imaginative than the last time. (Credit where it’s due: He has yet to run out of new ways to torture and mutilate people.) There are occasional playful flourishes, like the way the show signals the start of each flashback to EZ’s days as a clean-cut student dating Emily (Sarah Bolger), but otherwise it’s the same stuff, different names. (The Galindo cartel was a key part of Sons, too, but here it assumes the plot function of the manipulative Irish gun runners who funded SAMCRO.) That it’s a Latino group that gets mixed up with hot-button issues on both sides of the border offers some new shading, but that material largely takes a backseat to the same old plot moves. It’s a spin-off likely to be better received by people who didn’t watch the original.
The more frustrating aspect of Mayans comes on the character front, which was always the saving grace of Sons. Despite some strong actors like Olmos, Irby, Pino and American Crime alum Ricardo Cabral (as Coco, one of Angel’s closest friends in the club), none of the supporting characters come across as more than vaguely defined archetypes. It’s a big cast, and it’s no sin if not everyone pops at first (it took a while for Ryan Hurst to show the depth he could bring to Opie), but that nobody stands out early on is worrisome — particularly where JD Pardo is concerned. Sons went through the same creative bumps most dramas do in their first seasons, but Hunnam and especially Sagal were so compelling right from the start that it was worth waiting for the show to find itself. In part due to the nature of the character Sutter and James have created for him, in part due to Pardo’s own so-so charisma (previously on display in NBC’s Revolution), he doesn’t provide nearly enough gravity at the center of all this madness. And there’s certainly no one as instantly dazzling as Sagal was back in the day.
I had hoped that starting over from scratch would allow Sutter to regain the creative form of Sons‘ first couple of years, rather than the contorted wallow it became. But Mayans M.C. is basically Sons Season Eight with the names changed. If that notion excites you, enjoy.
Creator Kurt Sutter’s latest effort feels a lot like his biggest hit — with all of the violence and none of the compelling characters
By
ALAN SEPINWALL
JD Pardo stars as EZ Reyes in 'Mayans M.C.'
Prashant Gupta/FX
Sons of Anarchy was one of the biggest hits in the history of FX. The outlaw biker club drama’s second season was a classic. Katey Sagal was annually one of the Emmys’ most egregious snubs, and the show had a deep ensemble of actors like Charlie Hunnam, Maggie Siff, Ryan Hurst and Jimmy Smits to elevate what creator Kurt Sutter once described as “bloody pulp fiction with highly complex characters.”
Sons was also given to excess in almost every way: more plot twists, more graphic torture, more minutes per episode. (It, probably more than any other recent series, is responsible for the trend of drama episodes routinely creeping past the one-hour mark.) Just more more more, until it became too exhausting to watch. By the time Jax Teller made his final ride, even many die-hard SAMCRO fans had had enough.
After a misfire with the medieval fantasy The Bastard Executioner, Sutter has returned to familiar territory with Mayans M.C., a spin-off (co-created by Elgin James) set in the Sons universe, but focusing on a different club’s charter, located on the California/Mexico border.
The show (debuts September 4) is a chance to revisit the kind of material that Sutter does best, but with a clean slate of characters and plot, rather than the people and scenarios he wrung dry on Sons. But the two episodes provided for review are a disappointment, featuring many of the original series’ weaknesses without its greatest strengths.
Our antihero this time out is Ezekiel “EZ” Reyes (JD Pardo), a Mayans prospect who was once a promising college student (and still has a photographic memory, which becomes a handy plot device) before going to prison for killing a cop. Paroled after his victim was exposed as crooked, he teams up with big brother Angel (Clayton Cardenas) in the Mayans, much to the concern of their butcher father Felipe (Edward James Olmos). We get occasional glimpses of Emilio Rivera as Marcus Alvarez, who runs the Mayans’ Oakland charter and was a Sons staple, but this group down by the border is led by Michael Irby’s Bishop, struggling to keep the group independent of cartel kingpin Miguel Galindo (Danny Pino), who pays the Mayans to smuggle his drugs.
It’s a new setting (the Mayans even have a tunnel that allows them clandestine passage back and forth under the border) and mostly new characters, but it all feels pretty familiar. The pilot (which, true to form, runs 67 minutes without commercials) features three major plot twists, at least two of which will be obvious way ahead of time to anyone who watched the parent show (or, really, any cable or streaming drama of the last 20 years). Each of them places characters in situations that should be narratively unsustainable, but based on how Sons was plotted, everyone will be allowed to dangle on the end of their various metaphorical nooses for years. The early episodes also feature the obligatory helpings of graphic torture, child abductions, endless motorcycle chases and shootouts. (Sons rarely did action well, particularly for how often and how lengthy those sequences were; Mayans isn’t an improvement.)
But all of that comes with your admission to a Sutter motorcycle club show, even if most of it’s no more imaginative than the last time. (Credit where it’s due: He has yet to run out of new ways to torture and mutilate people.) There are occasional playful flourishes, like the way the show signals the start of each flashback to EZ’s days as a clean-cut student dating Emily (Sarah Bolger), but otherwise it’s the same stuff, different names. (The Galindo cartel was a key part of Sons, too, but here it assumes the plot function of the manipulative Irish gun runners who funded SAMCRO.) That it’s a Latino group that gets mixed up with hot-button issues on both sides of the border offers some new shading, but that material largely takes a backseat to the same old plot moves. It’s a spin-off likely to be better received by people who didn’t watch the original.
The more frustrating aspect of Mayans comes on the character front, which was always the saving grace of Sons. Despite some strong actors like Olmos, Irby, Pino and American Crime alum Ricardo Cabral (as Coco, one of Angel’s closest friends in the club), none of the supporting characters come across as more than vaguely defined archetypes. It’s a big cast, and it’s no sin if not everyone pops at first (it took a while for Ryan Hurst to show the depth he could bring to Opie), but that nobody stands out early on is worrisome — particularly where JD Pardo is concerned. Sons went through the same creative bumps most dramas do in their first seasons, but Hunnam and especially Sagal were so compelling right from the start that it was worth waiting for the show to find itself. In part due to the nature of the character Sutter and James have created for him, in part due to Pardo’s own so-so charisma (previously on display in NBC’s Revolution), he doesn’t provide nearly enough gravity at the center of all this madness. And there’s certainly no one as instantly dazzling as Sagal was back in the day.
I had hoped that starting over from scratch would allow Sutter to regain the creative form of Sons‘ first couple of years, rather than the contorted wallow it became. But Mayans M.C. is basically Sons Season Eight with the names changed. If that notion excites you, enjoy.
'Mayans MC' Co-Creator Kurt Sutter on the "Dark Irony" That Will Fuel the Series
Prashant Gupta/FX
Prashant Gupta/FX
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/mayans-mc-kurt-sutter-explains-series-premiere-1139783
Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter has invited viewers back into the familiar world of the FX biker drama by way of a new motorcycle club, a new setting, and a new show altogether: Mayans MC, co-created by Elgin James, taking its name and titular charter from one of the main adversaries (and eventual allies) from Sutter's original series.
Where Sons set its wheels down in the fictional Northern California town of Charming, Mayans hits the ground riding in the equally fictional Santo Padre, a town resting on the edge of California and Mexico. Given its setting, it's impossible not to consider current events when gazing upon Mayans MC, as early on as the very first image. In the opening scene, the camera lingers on a wall that divides the United States and Mexico, with the following words scrawled upon it in both English and Spanish: "Divided we fall." Sutter tells The Hollywood Reporter those words have a very personal origin.
when I was scouting the first pilot, however long ago, a year and half ago now, I saw that on the wall on the Mexican side and I thought, 'Oh, that's really cool,' " said Sutter about the initial iteration of the Mayans pilot, before it underwent extensive reshoots under the directorial eye of executive producer Norberto Barba. "When I saw it, it was only in Spanish. I thought, 'Oh, that's a really cool thing. I'm going to put it on the U.S. side,' because at the time, what I loved about it was it was a comment about the border and the two cultures and the two nations."
For Sutter, the phrase spoke directly to the conflict at the heart of Mayans' main character: Ezekiel "EZ" Reyes, played by J.D. Pardo, a brilliant young man who was once on the road toward a bright future, before fallout from a years-long prison stint brought him into the motorcycle club as a prospect.
"It spoke to the MC world," Sutter said. "It spoke to everything that the show is about in terms of brotherhood and camaraderie and all that stuff. That was my intention of including it in the story."
Intentions soon gave way to something else: Earlier in the year, in the midst of a harrowing news cycle about the Trump administration's separation of children and families at the U.S.-Mexico border, Sutter was putting the final touches on Mayans' opening episode, in which a new interpretation of the "divided we fall" image became abundantly clear.
"We were putting the sound mix and everything on finishing up the pilot," he recalled, "and I remember watching that opening image, and as the current climate was unraveling to what it currently is and continues to become, I had this sense of, 'Oh, fuck. Is that going to be perceived as me jamming something down someone's throat?'"
Sutter, never one to mince words, credits that sense with leading him toward his eventual feeling on Mayans' political relationship — not to mention the relationship between his own creative intent and the audience's interpretation.
Kurt Sutter Talks the Politics of 'Mayans MC,' Calls "Bulls—t" on All-White Writers Rooms
"I had to step away and realize that if I'm not going to let externals dictate how I tell stories, I can't do it in reverse either," he said. "I can't go in and say, 'Oh, wait a minute. I'm afraid this may be seen through this lens,' because then I'm just doing the same thing backwards. So, I had to step away from it and let it be what it's going to be and be perceived as whatever it is it's going to be perceived as. It just had a different flavor in terms of what the original intention was. That goes for any political lens that it might be seen through.
"It's not a political show," Sutter insisted. "No one ever utters a political ideology or a lean right or left. But the world is the world. The climate is the climate. The tensions are the tensions. There are people of color who have struggled from the jump and are being squeezed even more intensely in this current climate. So, they're going to have a point of view about it."
In that regard, the pilot's central shocker comes down to a political point of view: Angel Reyes (Clayton Cardenas), EZ's brother and a full patch member of the Mayans, taking a big (albeit private) stance against the leadership of his own club. In the closing moments of "Perro/Oc," it's revealed that Angel is secretly supporting a woman named Adelita (Carla Baratta), the leader of a group of Mexican resistance fighters who are at war with the Galindo cartel, the crime family first introduced in Sons of Anarchy and featured even more prominently in Mayans as business associates of the club.
As part of their secret association, Angel helped Adelita strike a major blow against Galindo, a move that's cast suspicion of a traitor within the Mayans' midst. Little do Santo Padre charter president Obispo "Bishop" Losa (Michael Irby) and club founder Marcus Alvarez (Emilio Rivera, reprising his role from Sons) know, Angel is the traitor — a word he takes issue with, when he reveals his secret to EZ.
"The vigilante groups are changing the game, going ISIS on the cartels. Galindo will bend or break. If the Mayans want a future, we gotta be in front of that change, and Adelita is the only way to do that," Angel tells his brother. "Galindo will keep throwing us to the lions. Alvarez won't push back because of a promise he made to Galindo's old man. Bishop won't betray Alvarez. That shit is going to bury us. I'm doing for the MC what it can't do for itself."
The final twist of the Mayans premiere makes it clear: The political divide within the MC, as well as conflicts between a powerful Mexican cartel and the people left reeling in its wake, stand to fuel the series as much or more than the real-world parallels evoked by its border town setting.
"No one could have predicted what would be happening on the border," said Sutter of the early stages of the show's development (FX ordered a Mayans script six months before the 2016 presidential election.) "The truth is, I set it on the border because I wanted the physical distance between mythologies. I didn't want to be in Northern California where we would organically bump into some of those characters [from Sons of Anarchy]. I didn't want to fuck with that mythology. I didn't want to be in L.A., which felt too trendy. I literally went to the farthest point of California so that I could have this space between these two mythologies. It wasn't like I wanted to set it on the border to make a statement or have it be a political show. It was just that, to me, it was creatively the smart thing to do."
Above all, Sutter said he and the season one writing team (including Andrea Ciannavei, Debra Moore Muñoz and Sean Tretta) set out to tell a story set in the world as it currently exists, with all the corruption and chaos that comes with it.
"Yes, it's a fictitious club in a fictitious town, but it's in a real country on a real border dealing with the current climate of the world," said Sutter. "Michael Irby's character, Bishop, has a line early in the pilot where they're [remarking upon how] heroin delivery is 60 percent higher than it has been, and his comment is, 'God Bless the AMA.' So, to me, that's a joke one of those guys would make. Is it a comment on big pharma? Yes. Clearly, it is. But it's not a comment in that I'm making a political statement. It's my character shining a lantern on the dark irony of, 'Fuck, man. We are thriving as outlaws because of people who are fucking greedier than we are.'"
Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter has invited viewers back into the familiar world of the FX biker drama by way of a new motorcycle club, a new setting, and a new show altogether: Mayans MC, co-created by Elgin James, taking its name and titular charter from one of the main adversaries (and eventual allies) from Sutter's original series.
Where Sons set its wheels down in the fictional Northern California town of Charming, Mayans hits the ground riding in the equally fictional Santo Padre, a town resting on the edge of California and Mexico. Given its setting, it's impossible not to consider current events when gazing upon Mayans MC, as early on as the very first image. In the opening scene, the camera lingers on a wall that divides the United States and Mexico, with the following words scrawled upon it in both English and Spanish: "Divided we fall." Sutter tells The Hollywood Reporter those words have a very personal origin.
when I was scouting the first pilot, however long ago, a year and half ago now, I saw that on the wall on the Mexican side and I thought, 'Oh, that's really cool,' " said Sutter about the initial iteration of the Mayans pilot, before it underwent extensive reshoots under the directorial eye of executive producer Norberto Barba. "When I saw it, it was only in Spanish. I thought, 'Oh, that's a really cool thing. I'm going to put it on the U.S. side,' because at the time, what I loved about it was it was a comment about the border and the two cultures and the two nations."
For Sutter, the phrase spoke directly to the conflict at the heart of Mayans' main character: Ezekiel "EZ" Reyes, played by J.D. Pardo, a brilliant young man who was once on the road toward a bright future, before fallout from a years-long prison stint brought him into the motorcycle club as a prospect.
"It spoke to the MC world," Sutter said. "It spoke to everything that the show is about in terms of brotherhood and camaraderie and all that stuff. That was my intention of including it in the story."
Intentions soon gave way to something else: Earlier in the year, in the midst of a harrowing news cycle about the Trump administration's separation of children and families at the U.S.-Mexico border, Sutter was putting the final touches on Mayans' opening episode, in which a new interpretation of the "divided we fall" image became abundantly clear.
"We were putting the sound mix and everything on finishing up the pilot," he recalled, "and I remember watching that opening image, and as the current climate was unraveling to what it currently is and continues to become, I had this sense of, 'Oh, fuck. Is that going to be perceived as me jamming something down someone's throat?'"
Sutter, never one to mince words, credits that sense with leading him toward his eventual feeling on Mayans' political relationship — not to mention the relationship between his own creative intent and the audience's interpretation.
Kurt Sutter Talks the Politics of 'Mayans MC,' Calls "Bulls—t" on All-White Writers Rooms
"I had to step away and realize that if I'm not going to let externals dictate how I tell stories, I can't do it in reverse either," he said. "I can't go in and say, 'Oh, wait a minute. I'm afraid this may be seen through this lens,' because then I'm just doing the same thing backwards. So, I had to step away from it and let it be what it's going to be and be perceived as whatever it is it's going to be perceived as. It just had a different flavor in terms of what the original intention was. That goes for any political lens that it might be seen through.
"It's not a political show," Sutter insisted. "No one ever utters a political ideology or a lean right or left. But the world is the world. The climate is the climate. The tensions are the tensions. There are people of color who have struggled from the jump and are being squeezed even more intensely in this current climate. So, they're going to have a point of view about it."
In that regard, the pilot's central shocker comes down to a political point of view: Angel Reyes (Clayton Cardenas), EZ's brother and a full patch member of the Mayans, taking a big (albeit private) stance against the leadership of his own club. In the closing moments of "Perro/Oc," it's revealed that Angel is secretly supporting a woman named Adelita (Carla Baratta), the leader of a group of Mexican resistance fighters who are at war with the Galindo cartel, the crime family first introduced in Sons of Anarchy and featured even more prominently in Mayans as business associates of the club.
As part of their secret association, Angel helped Adelita strike a major blow against Galindo, a move that's cast suspicion of a traitor within the Mayans' midst. Little do Santo Padre charter president Obispo "Bishop" Losa (Michael Irby) and club founder Marcus Alvarez (Emilio Rivera, reprising his role from Sons) know, Angel is the traitor — a word he takes issue with, when he reveals his secret to EZ.
"The vigilante groups are changing the game, going ISIS on the cartels. Galindo will bend or break. If the Mayans want a future, we gotta be in front of that change, and Adelita is the only way to do that," Angel tells his brother. "Galindo will keep throwing us to the lions. Alvarez won't push back because of a promise he made to Galindo's old man. Bishop won't betray Alvarez. That shit is going to bury us. I'm doing for the MC what it can't do for itself."
The final twist of the Mayans premiere makes it clear: The political divide within the MC, as well as conflicts between a powerful Mexican cartel and the people left reeling in its wake, stand to fuel the series as much or more than the real-world parallels evoked by its border town setting.
"No one could have predicted what would be happening on the border," said Sutter of the early stages of the show's development (FX ordered a Mayans script six months before the 2016 presidential election.) "The truth is, I set it on the border because I wanted the physical distance between mythologies. I didn't want to be in Northern California where we would organically bump into some of those characters [from Sons of Anarchy]. I didn't want to fuck with that mythology. I didn't want to be in L.A., which felt too trendy. I literally went to the farthest point of California so that I could have this space between these two mythologies. It wasn't like I wanted to set it on the border to make a statement or have it be a political show. It was just that, to me, it was creatively the smart thing to do."
Above all, Sutter said he and the season one writing team (including Andrea Ciannavei, Debra Moore Muñoz and Sean Tretta) set out to tell a story set in the world as it currently exists, with all the corruption and chaos that comes with it.
"Yes, it's a fictitious club in a fictitious town, but it's in a real country on a real border dealing with the current climate of the world," said Sutter. "Michael Irby's character, Bishop, has a line early in the pilot where they're [remarking upon how] heroin delivery is 60 percent higher than it has been, and his comment is, 'God Bless the AMA.' So, to me, that's a joke one of those guys would make. Is it a comment on big pharma? Yes. Clearly, it is. But it's not a comment in that I'm making a political statement. It's my character shining a lantern on the dark irony of, 'Fuck, man. We are thriving as outlaws because of people who are fucking greedier than we are.'"
Kurt Sutter Talks the Politics of 'Mayans MC,' Calls "Bulls—t" on All-White Writers Rooms
FX's bad boy showrunner, back with a 'Sons of Anarchy' spinoff, explains why he chose Disney over "f—in' crazy" Netflix money, his colorful past ("I didn't Weinstein anybody"), and why he "marvels" at Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes' deals: "When you see that money, the first thing that goes through your head is, 'F—.'"
Hanging in the entryway to Kurt Sutter's Santa Monica office is a 9-year-old legal letter from his longtime corporate bosses at 20th Century Fox Television.
The framed correspondence — a hostile work environment claim, which came after Sutter told an executive at the company to "crawl the fuck out of my ass and [producer Kevin G.] Cremin and I will deliver our show on budget" — serves as a valuable reminder for the notoriously foul-mouthed showrunner. "It hangs on my wall not to say, 'I'm a rebel,' " says Sutter, 58. "It hangs on my wall as, like, 'You're an impulsive fucking asshole, and think before you hit send.' "
Having gotten his start on Shawn Ryan's dark drama The Shield, Sutter — a father to three with his actress wife, Katey Sagal — went on to create his own equally dark series in Sons of Anarchy. For seven seasons, the gritty biker drama shattered ratings records for FX. Along the way, its New Jersey-reared creator feuded with journalists (famously calling this reporter the C-word), railed against Emmy voters ("all the wasted blow jobs I gave") and solidified his status as one of the biggest names in television. Now, three years after a short-lived Sons palate cleanser, The Bastard Executioner, he returns to that universe with Mayans M.C. The spinoff, set on the Mexico-California border, centers on Sons' Latino motorcycle club.
On a late summer morning ahead of Mayans' Sept. 4 premiere, Sutter opened up about his colorful past, his now unavoidably political series and the post-#MeToo conversation that accompanied his new overall deal.
Did you have any reservations about revisiting the world of Sons?
I just wanted to make sure I was doing it for the right reasons. I came into this project with a sense of, like, "OK, this is a thing that makes sense and I need to work and how do we do this." And it was [Mayans co-creator] Elgin James' excitement about this world and this project that really made me excited about TV again. I didn't think that it made creative sense to be the sole voice of a show that takes place in an entirely different culture. I'd seen buddies of mine — great writers — try to do it on other shows and have failed miserably. So, I knew that I wanted to find a writer of color who knows the world and I met with a lot of writers, both men and women.
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
Two of the many skulls that decorate Sutter's homey office. This pair was from Russell Brand, who briefly had an FX late-night show.
I assume you have read about Magnum P.I. showrunner Peter Lenkov, who recently got in hot water for incorrectly stating that he didn't have any Latinx writers because it's "incredibly hard" to find them?
Yeah, you know what? That's bullshit. It's a smaller pool and you have to do a little bit more work — you have dig a little deeper and you have to make choices outside your comfort zone, but that's bullshit. I clearly am not a guy that gives a fuck about being politically correct. And not that I don't think it's important or I'm being disrespectful, it's just not a priority of mine. Hiring the right voices for this show, anything other than that doesn't make creative sense to me. With Sons, I obviously wasn't raised in an M.C. world but I did the research and I could relate to small town, white, blue color, working class needs and vulnerabilities. To me, that was my wheelhouse. I can imagine the plight and the challenges of being of color, but I can only imagine it, right? So, there's only one dimension to that and I needed people who experienced it, like Elgin, and my other writers. Other than me, there were six. Three men and three women. I was the only white guy.
By the nature of its border locale, this show becomes political. You never actually mention Donald Trump by name, but is that a nod to him with the heroin label "Tiny Hands"?
Yeah. (Laughs.) When I was doing research on the M.C.s and spending time with these cats, one of the things that struck me and made me realize that I could deliver this world to an audience was their really dark and acute sense of humor. And I realized that the only way these guys can navigate this world is if they look at it with a sense of irony 'cause otherwise their heads would explode. So, yeah, insert "Tiny Hands." (Laughs.) And obviously it's not a political show, but to not acknowledge it, to not make a joke about it or bounce off of it would feel inauthentic. It just wouldn't feel real. In fact, the opening frame of the pilot is the wall that says, in both English and Spanish, 'Divided we fall.' And that was on the wall on the Mexican side when I was doing scouting on the first pilot. [The pilot was reshot.] I thought, "Oh, that's a really cool image," so when we had the opportunity to do it again, I was like that's how I want it to begin. And then as time unraveled and I'm looking at the pilot, I had this sense of, "Oh my God, does that feel like right from the jump I'm making some sort of political statement?" And I almost took it out but then I'm like, "Fuck no, I can't do that, I can't edit myself."
WATCH
'Mayans M.C.' Season 1 Trailer
Pretty much anything in the world today is a political statement.
Absolutely. And my experience spending time with these guys is that most of these guys are conservative more than liberal. There's that famous story about the Hell's Angels wanting to be recruited to go to Vietnam. But the same way I can't have a political agenda in writing the show, I can't have an agenda that says don't do that. Because if I do, I'm fucked, right? I'm editing myself and I'm not letting story happen.
When The Bastard Executioner wasn't working, John Landgraf famously allowed you to cancel it. What did you learn from that experience?
At the end of it there was this realization of, like, "I don't know how we sustain this pattern." Landgraf asked me what I wanted to do, did I want to change things and blah, blah, blah? But I felt like, I wouldn't have done anything differently. The story was the story. But I'm also not the man in the high tower, I'm not doing this to tell stories to myself — I'm a storyteller and I need people to listen to my stories, and if we couldn't find the audience, then to me it was like, "All right, it lived in the space and time it was supposed to and let's not try to reinvent it or change it or manipulate it to sell it."
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
"I have friends that give me napalm," jokes Sutter, who topped his empty missile with a real gas mask from World War II.
In January, you re-upped your deal at Fox.
The irony was I was the first deal they made after the whole Disney thing. (Laughs).
You did so against the backdrop of its pending acquisition by Disney and also in a hypersensitive #MeToo climate. Given all that, how did the process differ?
It was really at the height of that and obviously FX was dealing with the whole Louis C.K. thing and they were neck-deep in it. And then the Disney thing. But the truth is nobody really knew what the fuck was going to happen. So, you had a lot of people making decisions based on what they thought or think might happen. And not that it was all fear-based, some of it was just being politically smart and protecting themselves, but normally when I renew a deal, it's paperwork, it's a conversation. But a couple of things happened. One, because I didn't currently have a show in production, there was a sense of, like, "OK, what do you bring to the table and is it worth the investment" because those deals are few and far between. I ain't cheap. And then John Landgraf and Dana Walden were trying to ... to say they were just protecting themselves is not true, the truth is it was more about protecting me from myself. (Laughs.) So, it was really just a conversation.
What did it entail?
It was about not resurrecting season two of the Sons of Anarchy Kurt Sutter. I've mellowed a lot mainly because my fear subsided and I realized, "Oh, maybe I can do this and I don't have to be so aggressively on the attack and I can trust myself a little bit." So I calmed down and I've extracted myself from circumstances [that could rile me up], like I still can't read reviews. I wish I had tougher skin but I don't. In the last three-year deal I made, it was different: my behavior, my understanding, my maturity. But now they knew coming into a new relationship with new partners who weren't privy to the evolution of that, they're gonna look at everything and not know necessarily the progression of it. So, I think they felt like they needed to do their due diligence for the people coming in [and be able to say] "A conversation was had, this is what we know, this is what we trust."
And the conversation with John and Dana?
It was just a conversation about, "This is the current climate, we don't suspect that you're going to sabotage anything, but we need to do the due diligence." And at first it was disconcerting because I'm like, "What does that mean? Does it mean there's a new watchdog on my shoulder?" And it didn't mean any of that. It was basically, "We know who you are, we know what you can do, we have to make sure that when new entities come in that we can vouch for [you]. And at the very least we can say we have had this conversation."
You're about to work for a company that just fired Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn over offensive tweets from years ago.
Right, right, right.
And I've read your tweets …
Right, and we're friends 'cause I called you a c--- [on Twitter] about eight years ago. (Laughs.) Then there was, in a very politically delicate way, a, "Are there any skeletons in your closet that are gonna come back and bite us in the ass?" And I was like, "Well, as far as I know, I didn't Weinstein anybody. I may have upset people, I may have said inappropriate things, but there was not [any of that]." But again, they needed to do the due diligence. And as Landgraf says, "It's a different climate and you have to acknowledge it and be aware of it and move in step with it."
To that end, I was surprised to see you still have the hostile workplace letter hanging on your wall.
The reason why that letter was hung up in the first place and the reason why it's still there is not about, like, "Fuck you, I'm a bad ass," it's about "I'm a fuckin' idiot and that behavior creates fucking lawsuits."
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
"The reason that letter is up there is not 'Fuck you, I'm a badass,'" says Sutter. "It's, 'I'm a fuckin' idiot and that behavior creates fucking lawsuits.'"
What does the Disney version of the Kurt Setter brand look like? And do you have any concerns about that?
I had those conversations in depth with John [Landgraf]. And John obviously had concerns as well. Look, I don't know Bob Iger personally, but what he told John was the reason we're making this acquisition is so we can compete in a digital platform-driven world, and we can't compete against a Netflix or an Amazon with just Disney PG content. The only way we can compete is if we have a broader spectrum of content, and that's what FX brings to us. So, it's not about Disney-fying it. And if Landgraf trusted that then I have to trust it too, right?
Right. Just don't touch Mickey.
Yeah, don't fuck with the IP. (Laughs.)
You've told me in the past that you're "not exactly team material." Has that changed?
I say this not to be ironic, but I don't like people. I'm not, like, a gregarious guy. I don't walk into a room and want to engage people. I'm just not wired that way. One on one I'm fine. And my education on The Shield was so important because up until that point I only wrote by myself in a room. So, to suddenly have to be part of a team, I pushed back on it and it was weird. But, ultimately, I saw the power of discourse and of fighting for something you want. Me and Glen Mazzara used to go to the mat on shit. And the result of it, I believe, was always the best choice. In fact, I encourage that in my writers room. Sometimes my writers are way too nice to each other, and I will literally set fires just because I know that that pushback is important. So, collaboration isn't about being on the same page; it's is about people having two different points of view and having a creative discourse about it, and out of that comes the best idea. That's the power of collaboration and so, in that way, I enjoy being part of a team now.
I sense a but coming.
But, in a broader sense, in terms of being part of a bigger organization, I will never be the go-to guy for network. (Laughs.) There'll never be a big meeting where they'll go, "Oh, we should bring Kurt in." Because it's just not who I am, it's not what I do. It's not that I can't collaborate with people, but I'm a guy who has a very specific point of view who then can surround himself with people who can take that point of view and elevate it.
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
Encased Sons biker jackets from actor David Labrava, who wrote he took them from "two dumb bastards" at a NorCal event.
Netflix is signing eight-, nine-figure overall deals left and right. Was there any piece of you that thought, "Maybe I should check that out" rather than simply re-upping at Fox?
I don't mean to sound self-effacing, but I don't do this for the money. I do this so that I don't end up swinging from a pipe by my neck. For me, money is about respect, and that is really important to me. So, if writer x is getting x, y, z, then I fuckin' better get x, y, z 'cause that's the respect you owe me. So, in that regard, yes, money is a big, important part of that process 'cause I need to know that I'm valued and respected for me to show up and do what I need to do. Whether money is a good motivator for that or expression of that is a different conversation. I know Ryan [Murphy] a little bit and I know how talented he is, and when you see that money the first thing that goes through your head is, 'Fuck."
As in, "Fuck, I want that"?
Yeah, as in, "Oh my God, that's fuckin' crazy." But a person like Ryan or Shonda [Rhimes] — and I mean this in the most envious and respectful way — they're corporations. They've surrounded themselves with people and a process that allows them to generate a lot of content. And I marvel at that because I just don't have that skill. I don't trust people enough to go, "You do it." So it's not that it's not interesting to me, it's just not my skill set.
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
His tables are lined with art books, many of them gifts. There are also anarchy dolls and pop artist Frank Kozik's Smorkin' Labbit stools.
FX's bad boy showrunner, back with a 'Sons of Anarchy' spinoff, explains why he chose Disney over "f—in' crazy" Netflix money, his colorful past ("I didn't Weinstein anybody"), and why he "marvels" at Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes' deals: "When you see that money, the first thing that goes through your head is, 'F—.'"
Hanging in the entryway to Kurt Sutter's Santa Monica office is a 9-year-old legal letter from his longtime corporate bosses at 20th Century Fox Television.
The framed correspondence — a hostile work environment claim, which came after Sutter told an executive at the company to "crawl the fuck out of my ass and [producer Kevin G.] Cremin and I will deliver our show on budget" — serves as a valuable reminder for the notoriously foul-mouthed showrunner. "It hangs on my wall not to say, 'I'm a rebel,' " says Sutter, 58. "It hangs on my wall as, like, 'You're an impulsive fucking asshole, and think before you hit send.' "
Having gotten his start on Shawn Ryan's dark drama The Shield, Sutter — a father to three with his actress wife, Katey Sagal — went on to create his own equally dark series in Sons of Anarchy. For seven seasons, the gritty biker drama shattered ratings records for FX. Along the way, its New Jersey-reared creator feuded with journalists (famously calling this reporter the C-word), railed against Emmy voters ("all the wasted blow jobs I gave") and solidified his status as one of the biggest names in television. Now, three years after a short-lived Sons palate cleanser, The Bastard Executioner, he returns to that universe with Mayans M.C. The spinoff, set on the Mexico-California border, centers on Sons' Latino motorcycle club.
On a late summer morning ahead of Mayans' Sept. 4 premiere, Sutter opened up about his colorful past, his now unavoidably political series and the post-#MeToo conversation that accompanied his new overall deal.
Did you have any reservations about revisiting the world of Sons?
I just wanted to make sure I was doing it for the right reasons. I came into this project with a sense of, like, "OK, this is a thing that makes sense and I need to work and how do we do this." And it was [Mayans co-creator] Elgin James' excitement about this world and this project that really made me excited about TV again. I didn't think that it made creative sense to be the sole voice of a show that takes place in an entirely different culture. I'd seen buddies of mine — great writers — try to do it on other shows and have failed miserably. So, I knew that I wanted to find a writer of color who knows the world and I met with a lot of writers, both men and women.
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
Two of the many skulls that decorate Sutter's homey office. This pair was from Russell Brand, who briefly had an FX late-night show.
I assume you have read about Magnum P.I. showrunner Peter Lenkov, who recently got in hot water for incorrectly stating that he didn't have any Latinx writers because it's "incredibly hard" to find them?
Yeah, you know what? That's bullshit. It's a smaller pool and you have to do a little bit more work — you have dig a little deeper and you have to make choices outside your comfort zone, but that's bullshit. I clearly am not a guy that gives a fuck about being politically correct. And not that I don't think it's important or I'm being disrespectful, it's just not a priority of mine. Hiring the right voices for this show, anything other than that doesn't make creative sense to me. With Sons, I obviously wasn't raised in an M.C. world but I did the research and I could relate to small town, white, blue color, working class needs and vulnerabilities. To me, that was my wheelhouse. I can imagine the plight and the challenges of being of color, but I can only imagine it, right? So, there's only one dimension to that and I needed people who experienced it, like Elgin, and my other writers. Other than me, there were six. Three men and three women. I was the only white guy.
By the nature of its border locale, this show becomes political. You never actually mention Donald Trump by name, but is that a nod to him with the heroin label "Tiny Hands"?
Yeah. (Laughs.) When I was doing research on the M.C.s and spending time with these cats, one of the things that struck me and made me realize that I could deliver this world to an audience was their really dark and acute sense of humor. And I realized that the only way these guys can navigate this world is if they look at it with a sense of irony 'cause otherwise their heads would explode. So, yeah, insert "Tiny Hands." (Laughs.) And obviously it's not a political show, but to not acknowledge it, to not make a joke about it or bounce off of it would feel inauthentic. It just wouldn't feel real. In fact, the opening frame of the pilot is the wall that says, in both English and Spanish, 'Divided we fall.' And that was on the wall on the Mexican side when I was doing scouting on the first pilot. [The pilot was reshot.] I thought, "Oh, that's a really cool image," so when we had the opportunity to do it again, I was like that's how I want it to begin. And then as time unraveled and I'm looking at the pilot, I had this sense of, "Oh my God, does that feel like right from the jump I'm making some sort of political statement?" And I almost took it out but then I'm like, "Fuck no, I can't do that, I can't edit myself."
WATCH
'Mayans M.C.' Season 1 Trailer
Pretty much anything in the world today is a political statement.
Absolutely. And my experience spending time with these guys is that most of these guys are conservative more than liberal. There's that famous story about the Hell's Angels wanting to be recruited to go to Vietnam. But the same way I can't have a political agenda in writing the show, I can't have an agenda that says don't do that. Because if I do, I'm fucked, right? I'm editing myself and I'm not letting story happen.
When The Bastard Executioner wasn't working, John Landgraf famously allowed you to cancel it. What did you learn from that experience?
At the end of it there was this realization of, like, "I don't know how we sustain this pattern." Landgraf asked me what I wanted to do, did I want to change things and blah, blah, blah? But I felt like, I wouldn't have done anything differently. The story was the story. But I'm also not the man in the high tower, I'm not doing this to tell stories to myself — I'm a storyteller and I need people to listen to my stories, and if we couldn't find the audience, then to me it was like, "All right, it lived in the space and time it was supposed to and let's not try to reinvent it or change it or manipulate it to sell it."
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
"I have friends that give me napalm," jokes Sutter, who topped his empty missile with a real gas mask from World War II.
In January, you re-upped your deal at Fox.
The irony was I was the first deal they made after the whole Disney thing. (Laughs).
You did so against the backdrop of its pending acquisition by Disney and also in a hypersensitive #MeToo climate. Given all that, how did the process differ?
It was really at the height of that and obviously FX was dealing with the whole Louis C.K. thing and they were neck-deep in it. And then the Disney thing. But the truth is nobody really knew what the fuck was going to happen. So, you had a lot of people making decisions based on what they thought or think might happen. And not that it was all fear-based, some of it was just being politically smart and protecting themselves, but normally when I renew a deal, it's paperwork, it's a conversation. But a couple of things happened. One, because I didn't currently have a show in production, there was a sense of, like, "OK, what do you bring to the table and is it worth the investment" because those deals are few and far between. I ain't cheap. And then John Landgraf and Dana Walden were trying to ... to say they were just protecting themselves is not true, the truth is it was more about protecting me from myself. (Laughs.) So, it was really just a conversation.
What did it entail?
It was about not resurrecting season two of the Sons of Anarchy Kurt Sutter. I've mellowed a lot mainly because my fear subsided and I realized, "Oh, maybe I can do this and I don't have to be so aggressively on the attack and I can trust myself a little bit." So I calmed down and I've extracted myself from circumstances [that could rile me up], like I still can't read reviews. I wish I had tougher skin but I don't. In the last three-year deal I made, it was different: my behavior, my understanding, my maturity. But now they knew coming into a new relationship with new partners who weren't privy to the evolution of that, they're gonna look at everything and not know necessarily the progression of it. So, I think they felt like they needed to do their due diligence for the people coming in [and be able to say] "A conversation was had, this is what we know, this is what we trust."
And the conversation with John and Dana?
It was just a conversation about, "This is the current climate, we don't suspect that you're going to sabotage anything, but we need to do the due diligence." And at first it was disconcerting because I'm like, "What does that mean? Does it mean there's a new watchdog on my shoulder?" And it didn't mean any of that. It was basically, "We know who you are, we know what you can do, we have to make sure that when new entities come in that we can vouch for [you]. And at the very least we can say we have had this conversation."
You're about to work for a company that just fired Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn over offensive tweets from years ago.
Right, right, right.
And I've read your tweets …
Right, and we're friends 'cause I called you a c--- [on Twitter] about eight years ago. (Laughs.) Then there was, in a very politically delicate way, a, "Are there any skeletons in your closet that are gonna come back and bite us in the ass?" And I was like, "Well, as far as I know, I didn't Weinstein anybody. I may have upset people, I may have said inappropriate things, but there was not [any of that]." But again, they needed to do the due diligence. And as Landgraf says, "It's a different climate and you have to acknowledge it and be aware of it and move in step with it."
To that end, I was surprised to see you still have the hostile workplace letter hanging on your wall.
The reason why that letter was hung up in the first place and the reason why it's still there is not about, like, "Fuck you, I'm a bad ass," it's about "I'm a fuckin' idiot and that behavior creates fucking lawsuits."
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
"The reason that letter is up there is not 'Fuck you, I'm a badass,'" says Sutter. "It's, 'I'm a fuckin' idiot and that behavior creates fucking lawsuits.'"
What does the Disney version of the Kurt Setter brand look like? And do you have any concerns about that?
I had those conversations in depth with John [Landgraf]. And John obviously had concerns as well. Look, I don't know Bob Iger personally, but what he told John was the reason we're making this acquisition is so we can compete in a digital platform-driven world, and we can't compete against a Netflix or an Amazon with just Disney PG content. The only way we can compete is if we have a broader spectrum of content, and that's what FX brings to us. So, it's not about Disney-fying it. And if Landgraf trusted that then I have to trust it too, right?
Right. Just don't touch Mickey.
Yeah, don't fuck with the IP. (Laughs.)
You've told me in the past that you're "not exactly team material." Has that changed?
I say this not to be ironic, but I don't like people. I'm not, like, a gregarious guy. I don't walk into a room and want to engage people. I'm just not wired that way. One on one I'm fine. And my education on The Shield was so important because up until that point I only wrote by myself in a room. So, to suddenly have to be part of a team, I pushed back on it and it was weird. But, ultimately, I saw the power of discourse and of fighting for something you want. Me and Glen Mazzara used to go to the mat on shit. And the result of it, I believe, was always the best choice. In fact, I encourage that in my writers room. Sometimes my writers are way too nice to each other, and I will literally set fires just because I know that that pushback is important. So, collaboration isn't about being on the same page; it's is about people having two different points of view and having a creative discourse about it, and out of that comes the best idea. That's the power of collaboration and so, in that way, I enjoy being part of a team now.
I sense a but coming.
But, in a broader sense, in terms of being part of a bigger organization, I will never be the go-to guy for network. (Laughs.) There'll never be a big meeting where they'll go, "Oh, we should bring Kurt in." Because it's just not who I am, it's not what I do. It's not that I can't collaborate with people, but I'm a guy who has a very specific point of view who then can surround himself with people who can take that point of view and elevate it.
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
Encased Sons biker jackets from actor David Labrava, who wrote he took them from "two dumb bastards" at a NorCal event.
Netflix is signing eight-, nine-figure overall deals left and right. Was there any piece of you that thought, "Maybe I should check that out" rather than simply re-upping at Fox?
I don't mean to sound self-effacing, but I don't do this for the money. I do this so that I don't end up swinging from a pipe by my neck. For me, money is about respect, and that is really important to me. So, if writer x is getting x, y, z, then I fuckin' better get x, y, z 'cause that's the respect you owe me. So, in that regard, yes, money is a big, important part of that process 'cause I need to know that I'm valued and respected for me to show up and do what I need to do. Whether money is a good motivator for that or expression of that is a different conversation. I know Ryan [Murphy] a little bit and I know how talented he is, and when you see that money the first thing that goes through your head is, 'Fuck."
As in, "Fuck, I want that"?
Yeah, as in, "Oh my God, that's fuckin' crazy." But a person like Ryan or Shonda [Rhimes] — and I mean this in the most envious and respectful way — they're corporations. They've surrounded themselves with people and a process that allows them to generate a lot of content. And I marvel at that because I just don't have that skill. I don't trust people enough to go, "You do it." So it's not that it's not interesting to me, it's just not my skill set.
Photographed by Austin Hargrave
His tables are lined with art books, many of them gifts. There are also anarchy dolls and pop artist Frank Kozik's Smorkin' Labbit stools.
Nah, you know Peggy is Sutters wife. Plus that is when he just got locked up. He did 8years.
FX can do no wrong in my eyes. I've always said that.
Nah if she had his kid, it would be 8. He served 8 years. His old girl baby damn near a new born.
this