Ron Perlman exited Sons of Anarchy after season six and admits he still hasn’t seen the finale and probably never will…
For six seasons on Sons of Anarchy, Ron Perlman played SAMCRO founder Clay Morrow and quickly became one of the greatest antagonists in television history.
From his long list of betrayals that ended with members and rival gangs getting murdered to abusing his wife, Clay Morrow was a reprehensible character in many ways who always felt like he was doing the right thing for his family and for his club.
Perlman left the show after his character was killed at the end of season six so he wasn’t around for the final season that finished last December, but as he prepares to launch his new Amazon series Hand of God, he admits he still hasn’t seen the last episode and chances are he never will.
“I did not (watch the finale),” Perlman said recently. “When I was done, I was done.”
Perlman said he eventually learned the fates of everybody on the show through social media because it was ‘inevitable’ that someone was going to tell him what happened.
While he always stated that the fate of the characters was always up to Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, Perlman knew when the show was pitched as an homage to Hamlet that not many people were going to make it out alive.
“Inevitable, I guess. Inevitable. Yeah… You know, the big logline was, ‘This is Hamlet on Harleys,’ so Hamlet died, everybody died,” Perlman said. “Gertrude definitely died. Claudius definitely died. Ophelia died… and the one guy who lives (Horatio in Hamlet, Opie in Sons of Anarch), (Kurt Sutter) kills him in Season 3, so that should’ve lit a big signal.”
Perlman still looks at his time on Sons of Anarchy with fond memories not to mention the level of professional success he found after the show became one of the biggest hits in FX history and remains a pop culture phenomenon to this day.
Throughout the course of the show, Perlman did his best to relate to Clay as he justified any number of misdeeds as doing what he thought was the right thing, but admittedly as the crimes got more heinous, the actor fell out of love with the character.
“It’s been highly chronicled that I didn’t like the character in his last couple of seasons,” Perlman said. “I fell out of love with Clay, because the places he went — lost the nobility, and I always tried to find nobility in that character, even when he was doing nefarious things.”
Still, Perlman has no regrets about his time on Sons of Anarchy and will always appreciate the time he had on the show.
“I had a great six years on the show,” Perlman said. The show probably had as profound an impact on my personal and professional life, as anything I’ve ever done.”
Perlman’s next show Hand of God debuted on Amazon on September 4.
H/T: TVLine
