If you're familiar with Charlie Hunnam's character on the popular FX biker series, Sons of Anarchy, picturing him crying might be a little difficult. Apparently, when Hunnam feels really attached to a role, he can't help but let the tears flow. Due to scheduling issues, Hunnam dropped out of the erotic box office hit, Fifty Shades of Grey, after being cast in the lead role of Christian Grey. While many believed he pushed the film to the side because of its racy sex scenes, Hunnam remained adamant about his reasoning. He recently opened up to V Man to further explain his feelings towards the film.
The 35-year-old English actor broke a lot of hearts when he turned down the role of successful business man and BDSM enthusiast, Christian Grey. While his replacement, Jamie Dorian, did the role justice, some can't help but wonder how much different the movie would have been if Hunnam had stuck with the film. Fans weren't the only ones that were upset; the actor himself had upsetting feelings about declining the role at the last minute.
"Oh it was the worst professional experience of my life," said Hunnam to V Man. "It was the most emotionally destructive and difficult thing that I've ever had to deal with professionally. It was heartbreaking."
A photo posted by Charlie Hunnam (@charliematthewhunnam) on Jun 22, 2015 at 3:32am PDT
It turns out that the King Arthur actor had a pretty good reason to walk away from the part. Hunnam was already attached and in production of another feature film, Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak, as well as filming the final season of Sons of Anarchy. At the time, trying to balance his acting projects plus dealing with personal issues left him feeling a little unstable and "mentally weak."
Hunnam had previously promised Del Toro he would stick with his movie. Despite being the fourth lead character in the film and friends encouraging him to take the top role in Sam Taylor-Johnson's Fifty Shades of Grey, he refused because he didn't want to let his friend down or break his word. Hunnam broke down the emotional phone call between him and Taylor-Johnson, breaking down his hectic schedule and exhausting traveling arrangements.
"I called her and we both cried our eyes out on the phone for 20 minutes. I needed to tell her that this was not going to work. I was going to finish Sons, shoot the whole sequence where Tara was brutally murdered, fly to Vancouver the next day, have ten days of rehearsal, and then start shooting. Then I was going to have three days after that and I'd have to start shooting Crimson Peak and then I'd have two days to travel and go back into season seven of Sons. There was a lot of personal stuff going on in my life that left me on real emotional shaky ground and mentally weak. I just got myself so f*cking overwhelmed and I was sort of having panic attacks about the whole thing. I just didn't know what to do."
After being so completely honest and vulnerable, can you blame him for trying to fit some time in his schedule to breathe? Hunnam also addressed rumors about him chickening out from the sultry film because of its explicit sex scenes and dominant sexual undertones. He shot those rumors down quickly, admitting he had an extreme nude sex scene during his acting stint on UK's Queer as Folk.
"The outside perception of that was that I got really cold feet and got scared of the explicit nature of the sexuality of the piece. When I was 18 I was getting f*cked in the ass, completely naked on national TV, y'know?"
Catch Hunnam in the supernatural horror romance, Crimson Peak, as Dr. Alan McMichael in theaters on Oct. 16.
