The Show Place

November 9, 2008
Television
Out From Under All That Big Hair
By REBECCA CATHCART
Los Angeles

KATEY SAGAL sat at a dining room table on a Hollywood set recently, a small-screen wife cajoling her fictional husband. It was a familiar spot for Ms. Sagal. She has spent half of her 25-year television career playing the wife and mother, most memorably as the lovably vulgar Peggy Bundy on the Fox sitcom “Married ... With Children.”

But Ms. Sagal, 52, has left the nagging and the big hair behind. In her new role as Gemma Teller on “Sons of Anarchy” she is vicious, vulnerable and brutal.

“I wanted to do something different, to stretch, and this has provided that,” she said. “I don’t want to kill Peggy Bundy. I would just like her to step aside.”

FX marketed “Sons of Anarchy” as a story of war and commerce set in the world of outlaw motorcycle clubs. The show has retained its mostly male audience this fall by delivering on that promise. But in its first season there was a twist: Amid a gritty culture of brawling, gun-running men, women rule. And Gemma is the amoral “mother bear,” said Kurt Sutter, the show’s creator and executive producer (and Ms. Sagal’s husband).

“This is a misogynist subculture for sure, but she’s in control,” he added.

On the show Gemma’s husband is Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman), the leader of the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club and stepfather to her son, Jax, played by Charlie Hunnam. The Sons enrich themselves by selling semi-automatic weapons while defending their small Northern California town from drug dealers and developers. But Clay is aging and wracked by arthritis, and Jax, his heir apparent, begins to question the club’s propensity for violence. Once Jax discovers a manuscript about the club written by his father, the distance between the two men grows.

Mr. Sutter, 44, had “Hamlet” in mind while shaping the tight-knit world of a mother, son and stepfather. And he tailored the role of Gemma for his wife. “Katey is a fiercely protective mother,” said Mr. Sutter, who was a producer on “The Shield.” “Gemma is too, but she operates without normal limits.”

In one scene she breaks a young woman’s nose with a skateboard. In another she hides a full syringe in the folds of a Bible to tempt her drug-addicted daughter-in-law, played by Drea de Matteo.

“Gemma, in the hands of a lesser actor, could feel brittle and one-dimensional,” said John Landgraf, president of FX Networks. “She does terrible things. But Katey has a warmth and integrity that makes you like her.”

So far this season the show has attracted an average of more than two million viewers an episode, a better showing than FX’s other critically acclaimed shows, “The Shield” and “Damages.” The network announced a second season for “Sons of Anarchy” last month.

Ms. Sagal has changed professional directions in the past. Before “Married ...With Children” she worked as a backup singer for Bette Midler, Etta James and Bob Dylan. She let go of music to pursue acting full time in the mid-1980s but returned to songwriting a few years later. Her first album, “Well,” was released by Virgin in 1994. And she still finds time to perform about 30 shows a year with a backup band.

“It’s very inspiring as a younger female actress to see somebody who’s been around as long as she has now making a transformation and reinventing herself,” said Maggie Siff, who was on “Mad Men” and plays Jax’s ex-girlfriend Tara.

Though a handful of actresses over 50 are playing complex and alluring characters on television (including Glenn Close on “Damages”), it is still rare, Ms. Siff added: “In this business a lot of women’s careers are over when they turn 40.”


In October Ms. Sagal made her way to Henderson, Nev., singing her brand of bluesy rock at a small outdoor amphitheater. Between songs she chatted with the 300 or so people sitting on folding chairs and concrete steps covered in AstroTurf.


“Most of you probably know me from TV?“ she asked.

“Peg Bundy! Yeah!” yelled a man in a pink and teal Hawaiian shirt that barely stretched over his belly.

Ms. Sagal smiled. She sat on a stool and sang the mournful notes of “Daddy’s Girl,“ a song she wrote from her 2004 album, “Room” (Valley).

“I do a lot of writing about my family,” she said back on the “Sons of Anarchy” set in North Hollywood, as a makeup artist glued a long fake scar to her chest. “I find it very cathartic, a way to figure out what all that childhood stuff was about.”

Both her parents worked in the entertainment industry. They moved their five children around Los Angeles before settling in Brentwood when Ms. Sagal was 12. She grew up, she said, surrounded by actors and “Hollywood intelligentsia” like Norman Lear, and early on saw the sweat behind the glamour.

Before she was 25 Ms. Sagal lost both her parents. Her mother, the writer and producer Sara Zwilling, died of heart disease. Her father, the director Boris Sagal, died on the set of the television movie “World War III” in Oregon, when he walked into the moving blade of a helicopter by accident.

“That was a dark period,“ Ms. Sagal said. “I was kind of lost for several years.“

Besides the songwriting, playing the broad comedy of “Married ... With Children” helped her cope with the turbulence in her life (including a miscarriage) and earned her four Golden Globe nominations and a comfortable lifestyle. But it also cemented an identity that has taken time to break apart.

“I would literally have to go meet people so they could see I didn’t have big red hair and wear high heels constantly,” she said. “It was just really ingrained in people.”

Now, she said, her life and career are in a renaissance. She and Mr. Sutter had a daughter, Esmé, through surrogacy nearly two years ago. She has a son, 12, and a daughter, 14, from a previous marriage. “And I sing whenever I can,“ she said.

In Henderson Ms. Sagal stood in a pool of purple light on the outdoor stage. She wore a tight black dress and high-heeled boots, her arms held above her head as she swayed to a guitar solo.

Seated near the stage Becky Pearce, 41, had brought her three teenage children to the show. She was not familiar with Ms. Sagal’s music, but she had been watching “Sons of Anarchy,” often alone, while her boyfriend worked the night shift repairing automated teller machines.

“I like that she has all the power,” Ms. Pearce said of Gemma. Then she added, of Ms. Sagal, “She is beautiful, and her voice just rises up.”



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