Maggie Siff’s character, Dr. Tara Knowles, will be the new queen of the SAMCRO universe when the upcoming season five of Sons of Anarchy premieres on September 11. The anticipation of how that is going to play out is high among the show’s fans. Armed with a long list of questions, I was determined to find out as much as possible during the show’s press conference at Comic-Con.
When Siff joined us, she readily admitted to being a Comic-Con virgin and marveled at the event. “It’s kind of amazing,” she said. Right away, I asked her if she was aware Tara had such a large following within the SOA fandom.
Maggie Siff is a self-professed Comic-Con virgin.
“I was a little bit surprised because I think of it as being such a show about the guys and that so much of my identity on the show has been like this outside character kind of floating around periphery of the world,” Siff stated. “So I’m always sort of like, ‘Oh, people like Tara, people are invested in Tara,’ still surprises me sometimes.”
My next question was if Tara, being a doctor, had fully embraced the motorcycle club’s lifestyle.
“She’s still trying to figure it out. I talked to Kurt a lot about how Tara becomes more the Queen. She’s not Gemma, she’s still a doctor, and she’s still seen a wider world than some of the other characters. She has a deep intelligence and she’s lived with a conscience for a long time,” Siff shared. “I think that she’s struggling to find the balance but I think the darker, more protective parts of her nature, the angrier parts of her nature, she just has less impulsive control around them as she lives alongside these people so that part of her is coming forward.”
It sure sounds like we’re about to see a more fiery and aggressive Tara. Personally, I can’t wait as that would make for great drama. Then, as anyone who has seen season four would anticipate, the incident in which her hand was hurt during a kidnapping attempt had to be brought up. First, we discussed her personal take on that particular storyline: “A lot of the stuff with the hands this past season was really challenging. It was kind of brutalizing. You get very attached to your character; you’re inside of their minds for years on end and then something like that happens, it’s kind of devastating.”
Siff said Tara is staying with Jax and trying to make it happen.
We then discussed how the attack could severely impact Tara’s ability to work as a surgeon. “I think the experience of that, for her, it’s this thing that has identified her is taken away and what is left is living inside the club but she embraces it,” Siff explains. “At the end of the season, you see her say like ‘all right, I’m here again’ but in a different way. She’s going to stay by Jax and trying to make it happen.”
Surprisingly, Siff next admits that making the transition from the more straight-shooter Tara we saw in the first four seasons of the show to the more assertive and outspoken Tara of late has been quite easy: “Making that move towards the darker aspects of her and the ones that more closely resemble the lives of these people, it’s been easy. I really don’t know why except it’s more like letting things go as opposed to adding things on.”
Just like Katey Sagal, Siff is enjoying the portrayal of the darker side of her character; she also expressed a high level of respect for her fellow cast members. “We know these characters so well. I think most of the preparation is like know your lines inside and out, backwards and forwards and show up. The relationships are so in place and I trust everybody I work with so much, it kind of happens on its own now.”
Here’s to hoping for a stronger and bolder Tara Knowles as she emerges as the new ‘Queen’ of SAMCRO.
For more on the show visit: http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/soa/. On Twitter, follow @SonsofAnarchy, @sutterink, @FXNetworks, and tweet using the hashtag #SOAFX
All photos © 2012 Yourentertainmentcorner.com and Elle Lutz. All Rights Reserved.
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2 comments
I’m one of the few people that just couldn’t stand Tara in season 4. I don’t think I’m just being hateful because I never liked Tara, but I think that the storyline of a “gifted Pediatric Heart Surgeon risks hard earned career for criminal lifestyle….because she’s in love.” This is the hardest, most insulting storyline for me to take. I am not looking forward for a “protective” Tara at all. I know her hand got smashed and she is in a really dark place right now, but if anything, something like that would have completely made her LEAVE Charming, instead of “staying by her man.”
She might have the new “queen” position, but her actions are far from queenly. At least Gemma does whatever she wants and isn’t forced into being something she does not want to be. Meanwhile, it seems to me like Tara just settled for the biker lifestyle. Not so badass to me, but rather weak. It was such a shame because Tara was really starting to stand up on her own in season 3.
With that said, I think Maggie Siff is a great actress. But I’m just giving another perspective. We’ll see how season 5 turns out to be.
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If we look at this rationally, you’re absolutely correct. I don’t think a woman with her level of education would jeopardize her surgeon career for any guy (no matter how good the sex may be *wink wink*). Loosing her license, the school loans she probably has from all those years of schooling…. can you imagine?
I wouldn’t jeopardize it no matter how hot the guy was. I think the difficulty too is that we are asked to accept the story line when we don’t know much about Tara and her past. Perhaps, things happened to her as a kid or a teen that binds her to Jax. If we were provided with this additional information, her decision making would be more justifiable, perhaps? The one thing we can see is that Jax seems to be the only person that makes her light up like a Christmas tree. Jax gets Tara out of her reserved shell. Plus, the only ‘family’ she seems to have is her club as no other family is ever mentioned. It’s interesting Sutter has chosen to portray her as such a loner which kind of fits why Tara doesn’t walk away from Jax. On a slightly different note, I don’t agree with the criticism Maggie has received from others for seeming too ‘stiff’ in her portrayal of Tara at times. I think she’s done a terrific job in playing a controlled woman (not to be confused with controlling) who happens to be very reserved and a silent (but active observer) of her surrounding and people’s dynamics.
But aside from this being a fictional story, in the midst of all the violence in the show, I think Sons of Anarchy is not only the journey of a man (Jax) but it’s also a love story. I may be getting ahead of myself but I think Sutter is a romantic at heart and this particular story line steers me to reach that conclusion. Good or wrong, he wants to explore that notion of a woman ‘staying by her man’ no matter what. Ultimately, I don’t think this is going to well end for Tara. There is a price to be paid. Whether it’s her career, loosing Jax or her own life, we’re going to have to wait to see what it is.
Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective and I hope we can continue our dialogue here. Trust me when I say that it has bothered me at times too but I’m addicted to this show as it were a drug, lol. Hence, I’ll continue watching it. And yes, let’s see what S5 brings.