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

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