Why Charlie Hunnam Doesn’t Like His Early ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Episodes

Charlie Hunnam rose to fame for his portrayal of Jax Teller in FX’s Sons of Anarchy. But the actor isn’t the biggest fan of his early episodes.

In a new interview with Variety, the English actor discussed his new hit Netflix series Monster: The Ed Gein Story, and looked back on some of his most famous roles.

At age 18, Hunnam’s breakout role was in the 1999 British series Queer as Folk, a gay drama that was released when homosexuality on TV was still extremely taboo. He had a few big film roles along the way—most notably in Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men—but his career boomed when Sons of Anarchy premiered.

In the show, which is a loose adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Jax Teller is the leader of a motorcycle gang founded by his father and must carry on his family’s legacy. The series was wildly popular among critics and fans across its seven-season run from 2008 to 2014.

But Hunnam didn’t have many good things to say about his early performances on the series.

“I would look back at those early episodes and think I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I didn’t have a very developed skill set,” Hunnam says. “I feel really proud of Seasons 6 and 7, as though my work had finally caught up to the level of my aspiration.”

In the later seasons of SoA, Jax would spiral into insanity as he reacted to situations with excessive violence—an acting skill Hunnam would carry into his latest role as infamous serial killer Ed Gein.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story is streaming now on Netflix.