Highlights
- Kurt Sutter says he has no involvement in Charlie Hunnam’s Legends.
- Hunnam approached him while pitching the project and asked for his blessing.
- The new FX limited series brings several Sons of Anarchy stars together as themselves.
For Sons of Anarchy fans, Charlie Hunnam bringing much of the old gang back together for Legends naturally raises one question: where is Kurt Sutter?
Sutter created the original FX biker drama, served as its showrunner and executive producer, and helped build the world that turned Jax Teller and the Sons into television icons. Yet he has no creative role in Legends. According to Sutter, however, that is not the result of a falling-out with Hunnam or FX. It is because the new series belongs to a different idea entirely.
“I’m not involved with Legends at all, nor should I be,” Sutter said in an Instagram video.
That distinction matters because Legends is not attempting to resurrect Sons of Anarchy. Hunnam and the returning cast are not reprising Jax, Clay, Gemma or the other characters they played in the seven-season series. Instead, they are playing themselves in a story about the strange afterlife of a hit television show.
Hunnam made sure Sutter was on board
Hunnam apparently knew that Sutter's involvement would be an obvious question. While developing the project and pitching it to the network, the actor went directly to the person who created the world that made the reunion possible.
Sutter said Hunnam asked for his blessing, particularly because legal issues surrounding the Sons of Anarchy intellectual property meant the new project could not simply use the original show's characters and mythology.
Sutter had no objection.
He said the new series has nothing to do with the characters or mythology he created and is instead concerned with the legacy of the show itself. In his view, that legacy belongs to far more people than just its creator.
The Sons of Anarchy cast are playing themselves
That is where Legends takes its biggest swing.
More than a decade after Sons of Anarchy ended, its cast reunites at a fan convention. Hunnam, Ron Perlman, Katey Sagal, Maggie Siff, Mark Boone Junior, Tommy Flanagan, Kim Coates and Theo Rossi all appear as themselves.
The convention reunion, however, quickly becomes something much more dangerous when the group faces a real-world threat.
The premise turns the show's enormous fandom into part of the story, blurring the line between the actors who played the bikers and the fictional world audiences once watched them inhabit.
Sutter has already seen the script
Far from rejecting the idea, Sutter appears to be one of the project's early supporters.
He said he had taken a look at the script, joking that it had been left on his wife Katey Sagal's knitting table. Sagal is among the Sons of Anarchy cast members returning for Legends.
Sutter described the script as well done and said he had “full-blown” support for the project. He also praised Hunnam personally, making it clear that he wants the series to succeed even though he has no hand in making it.
His comments also suggest that the old tensions between Sutter and FX are not driving his decision to stay away. Sutter was fired from Mayans M.C. in 2019 after an internal investigation into complaints from cast and crew, but he now says he has “nothing but love” for FX and its executives.
So the story behind Sutter's absence is less dramatic than fans might expect. He is not being shut out of the Sons of Anarchy reunion. Hunnam came to him first, Sutter gave the project his blessing, and Legends is deliberately being built as something separate from the mythology of the original series.
