‘Sons of Anarchy’ Creator Kurt Sutter Reveals How it Felt to See Wife Katey Sagal’s Character Be Killed On-Screen

One of the most talked about scenes that unfolded during Sons of Anarchy’s illustrious run saw Jax Teller finally turn on his mother. The moment truly took the breath away from the audience and remains a hot topic among loyal fans of the show.

Fielding questions as he usually does on Twitter, the series’ creator, Kurt Sutter, spoke about that major scene, which also featured his wife, Katey Sagal, seeing her time on the series come to an end. A fan asked Sutter, who previously shared how he came he came up with the series’ title, how it felt to see his wife film a scene in which she dies and whether or not that took a toll on him. Sutter quipped back, “Umm… no, because we didn’t actually kill anyone. It was all make-believe. Katey is at home right now. But thanks for looking out.” Many of his followers appreciated the snarky comment.

This wasn’t the only question that came his way in regards to the Teller mother and son relationship. Sutter was asked why it took so long for Jax to finally see the dark side in his mom. “Jax trusted Gemma because, no matter how much chaos she created, she was his f—— mom. And he knew her maternal love was strong and genuine,” he responded before adding a second tweet to his answer. “That’s why he trusted her. That’s why Gemma knew when Jax found out about the betrayal, he could only do one thing. The outlaw thing. In the rose garden.”

In 2014 after that episode aired in which Sagal’s character met her fate, she spoke with TV Line about what it was like to film that dramatic scene. She described it as a “very emotional” scene to film. “We would go in the house right before we walked out [into the garden] and both of us would break down crying. [We] had to hold on to each other, and then we’d go shoot the scene. We did that several times. We’ve all been in this happy place of denial that this wasn’t really ending, while we’ve been doing the work this season. But now, there was no denial that this was ending. It was very emotional.”

In that same interview, Sagal explained that this was the most “merciful” for her character to die. She felt that keeping her alive would have been the worse of the two options, “I think that to have her live a life without all that she knows would’ve been, ultimately, way more torturous for her.”