Charlie Hunnam may be beloved for his Sons of Anarchy role, but one “what if” will always follow him for the rest of his career. What if he did make Fifty Shades of Grey?
He has talked about leaving the project before, but in a new interview, he says that the packed schedule he had created for himself gave him a nervous breakdown. The actor just couldn’t be in more places than once.
“I was going to finish Sons at like 11 p.m. Friday night, get on the plane Saturday morning to Vancouver for Fifty, missing the whole first week of rehearsal and start shooting Monday morning,” Hunnam told MovieFone. “And I was going to shoot that film, wrap that on the Wednesday and the following Monday I was going to start shooting Crimson Peak in Toronto. I just had like ... frankly, something of a nervous breakdown.”
Hunnam stressed that he took the role of Christian Grey because he was really interested in doing it and wanted to work with director Sam Taylor-Johnson. But once he saw the online reaction to his casting, he realized the true magnitude of the project.
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“I just said, 'I can't ... I can't ...,'" the Pacific Rim star recalled. "To fail on such a grand scale - because Fifty's going to be massive, it's going to be huge. I really didn't want to fail on such a grand scale and I just couldn't transition from Jax Teller to Christian Grey in 48 hours. I bit off more than I could chew and it was painful. I loved the character and I wanted to do it.”
Hunnam was ultimately replaced with Jamie Dornan. Audiences will get to see Dornan’s Christian on Valentine’s Day 2015.
Had Fifty Shades not started until next year, he might have been able to do it. SOA is starting its final season on FX tonight.
image courtesy of Peter West/ACE/INFphoto.com