Katey Sagal Previews Gemma’s Wild Ride during Sons of Anarchy’s Final Season

During the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, Katey Sagal didn’t hide her eagerness to talk about Sons of Anarchy’s seventh season, especially regarding what is going on with her character, Gemma Teller-Morrow. During last season’s finale, things took an unexpected turn for Gemma and her actions will gravely impact her son, Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam).

In order to fully understand what is going on with Gemma, we must first discuss her present state of mind. Sagal took the time to discuss this in detail, as well as other final season highlights surrounding her character.

On Gemma’s Current Situation

“We start two weeks after the fact. In true Gemma fashion, she’s decided what she needs to do to protect her family, which now involves those two little boys. She’s going to make some decisions based on how much people need to know. This is what I’ll say: what happened wasn’t premeditated. She really thought she was being betrayed in the ultimate way, along with the perfect storm of Nero (Jimmy Smits) dumping her; it was just a bad day. I think how she reacted was as shocking to her as to anybody else. I think now what she does, which is truly like Gemma, is she gets on to what is. Do I come clean with the secret? What is best to protect my family?’ And that’s what you’ll see, how she deals with it.”

On Gemma Handling Her Big Secret

“She’s smoking, drinking a little. She’s actually kind of on her game. There are a lot of balls in the air and you’ll start to see—as the season progresses—lies and secrets only lead to more.”

On the Challenges of Playing Gemma this Season

“The duality she deals with this season, which is words are coming out of her mouth, but the dialogue in her head is completely different. So that is a fascinating thing to play but at the same time, she loved Tara (Maggie Siff). She can really relate and has a lot of empathy for Jax for the loss of her. Even though she created the problem, it doesn’t take away from the grief of losing this woman she loved. So, it’s hard to play but she’s also able to put herself in the shoes of the boy she loves the most [Jax]. So it’s just interesting as an actress.”

On the Emotions on the Set Going into the Final Season

“We’re all in denial, although it’s a very happy set right now. We all have such enormous gratitude for what has gone on. Every once in a while, we dip our toes into ‘uh oh, it’s almost gone.’ As satisfying as that also is, I think we all feel like this is a good way to end it; this is where the story should end. There’s relationships with people that you love; there’s the security and safety in this business of actually having one job, which is crazy. So…but I think overall, the overall vibe is just one of enormous gratitude and trying to drink it in because it will soon not be there.”

On Storylines Still Surprising Her

“The whole thing surprises me as it has every season. This show is written so intricately, he [Sutter] takes it left when you really thought it was going right. It is for us as well, we’re all like ‘what?’ It’s been all very surprising.”

On Gemma’s Legacy

“I really like her and I don’t know how she functions, ultimately, with the weight of what you’ll see this season. It becomes weightier. I did a lot of reading about people that do heinous things and actually go on and live their lives. I mean, you hear about it all the time. So, could that be Gemma’s legacy? Possibly.”

In the end, Sagal made a great point regarding Gemma’s situation: “The bigger arc question is can you live with a lie? The lie becomes huge.”

Sons of Anarchy’s final season premieres September 9, 2014 at 10pm ET/PT, only on FX.

For more on the show, go to http://www.fxnetworks.com/soa and http://www.sutterink.com/.

To check out Kurt Sutter’s Sons of Anarchy video channel on YouTube, go to http://www.youtube.com/sutterinksoa.

Like Sons of Anarchy on Facebook.. Follow the show on Twitter @sonsofanarchy, @sutterink, and @FXNetworks, and tweet using the hashtag #SOAFX.

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