Charlie Says His "Grey" Would've Been a Disaster

Meet Charlie Hunnam: flea market enthusiast, blonde-beard haver, man who knows his creative threshold for playing the crazies. In a recent interview, Charlie Hunnam said that playing Christian Grey would've been a "f--king disaster" because it was in such sharp conflict with his character Jax Teller on Sons of Anarchy. Essentially, playing two types of psychopaths in close succession wasn't gonna fly.

Hunnam was interviewed for the December issue of Men's Heath, and gave us further insight into his controversial decision to walk away from the role of Christian Grey back in October 2013. Although his rationale of "schedule conflicts" sounded like a cop-out to some, the British actor claims that he didn't take his decision to drop out lightly. In previous interviews, he's called the ordeal "painful" and "difficult" saying that he nearly "had a bit of a nervous breakdown" over the potential of not doing the character justice. In this most recent interview, Hunnam goes into further detail about how he had far too much on his plate to take on this role, and that trying to do so would've been terrible. He says:

I was going to finish playing a psychopath who'd just lost his wife [in Sons], and five days later I'd be on set playing Christian Grey. I was like, "This is going to be a f--king disaster." It was the opposite of how I've tried to ground my career, not stretch myself too thin, and always do my homework.

Hey, sure, that sounds reasonable. Immersing yourself in one darkly tortured soul is more than enough. He continued:

There's a tendency in this Hollywood machinery to take on too much. You end up not being able to give everything you want. Since I was young, I've been aware that I need time to myself to process everything.

Unlike any of these characters, Hunnam like a well-adjusted man who knows himself and his artistic limits. I'm no classically-trained actor, but taking on two complicated characters without ample time to prepare or transition is beyond daunting. Sons of Anarchy's Jax Teller is a motorcycle kingpin and classic anti-hero. Christian Grey is essentially the non-homicidal Patrick Bateman, a megalomaniac who hides his sadist predilections beneath a cool "Master of the Universe" veneer. Perhaps they'd both hit it off if they ended up at the same demented dinner party for fictional characters, but playing them both simultaneously would be a pickle indeed.

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