‘Sons of Anarchy’: Kurt Sutter Reveals How He Pulled off That Gruesome Otto Scene

Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter recent revealed how he pulled off that notoriously gruesome Otto scene.

The SoA moment in question, for those who are unfamiliar, is when “Big” Otto Delaney — the character that Sutter himself played on the show — bites off his own tongue in defiance during an interrogation.

Speaking to Uproxx about that shocking sequenced, Sutter admitted that “it was such a dark f—ing scene,” and revealed that “there were so many technical pieces to that scene, because it was a stunt.”

“It was a prosthetic tongue, and it had blood pellets in it, and I had to slam … there were so many pieces of it to make it work, and then throwing it at the fucking window, we had it on a fish line, so it would hit the window,” he went on to explain. “So it was done in pieces quite a bit, it’s hard to even remember the emotionality of it because it was so f—ing weird and technical.”

“And I just remember Donal Logue [who played former U.S. Marshal Lee Toric on SoA] on the other side of the glass, just looking at me like, you know, ‘Look at this s— we get to show up and do every day,’ ” Sutter recalled. “But I only remember that it was like, ‘We need another tongue, not enough blood.’ “

In addition to sharing gory details of the show, Sutter also spoke candidly about how far he has come as a creator in the years between Sons of Anarchy’s first season and today, with the premiere of his new show Mayans M.C.

“What I learned from Sons in hindsight is that when you’re beginning a project, and you don’t know what it is, and how it’s going to be perceived, you’re only driven by the sense of needing to tell a story,” Sutter admitted. “And in hindsight, you can look back and say, ‘Oh, the show was successful because of X.’ Strong female characters, dark sense of humor, whatever, right? All that shit is a result of not having those parameters and those boxes where you think you need to check off to be successful.

“And coming into Mayans, which is a similar world, a similar process, it’s difficult to not look at the things that worked in Sons and go, ‘Oh, I should do that,’ ” he continued. “And I learned in that process that it’s a continuing sense of education in that, ‘Wait a minute, I didn’t know any of that s—’ going into Sons. And because I didn’t know any of that s—, that s— happened.”

“So I really have to create that environment for myself in Mayans, and not necessarily think in terms of what I had to do to make it work. I had to put myself in that same sort of naive mindset, creatively, so I didn’t think in terms of what I needed to achieve,” he concluded. “Like I could just tell the stories I needed to tell, and then trust that at some point, I could step back and say, ‘Oh, that worked.’ “

Mayans M.C. debuted on Sept. 4 and will continue to air on Tuesdays for th duration of its 10-episode first season.