TCA: FX Panels Cover Sons of Anarchy, The League

FX was present at TCA on Tuesday, with panels on regularly scheduled series Sons of Anarchy, Terriers, Lights Out, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The League and Archer. Here are some of the notable quotes:Ron Perlman on the character dynamic on biker drama Sons of Anarchy (which opens season three on Tuesday, Sept. 7 at 10 p.m. ET):“These guys are fighting for the life that they envision for themselves, and they haven’t an incredibly well-articulated code of values that sort of permeates its way through the whole family because it is a family. Its men and women and children and earners and caretakers and spenders. You know, that’s essentially is what is at the base of the thrust of this family, family drama is what it is, and we’re just fighting for the things that are going to make us have the lives we want to live. And no one is going to tell us what that life should or should not be. We make up our own rules. I think that the things that are essentially universal in our code are compelling things—loyalty, sacrifice. So, you know, these are things that are interesting to watch on any level whether they’re fraught with big dynamics or small dynamics. In this instance because we’re outlaws and we’re always kind of walking on this tightrope, they’re big dynamics.”-----Creator and executive producer Kurt Sutter on the upcoming season of Sons of Anarchy:“I don’t know if there’s one specific overriding theme. I think the theme is always about family and Jax sort of defining his role as a father and as a partner and as a son and as a member of this club, and the Abel storyline really drives us through pretty much the entire season, and I don’t want to give anything away in terms of what that means and where that takes us, but the thing is our seasons, the actual span of time within our seasons is very short. It’s potentially two or three weeks. So there isn’t a lot of time that passes where you can have a lot of things unfold organically. It is a very concentrated period of time which I think helps feed the sense of urgency for the tasks that they have at hand this season.”----- Creator and executive produce Ted Griffin on upcoming drama Terriers (which premieres on Wednesday, Sept. 8 at 10 p.m. E): “I saw Shawn Ryan (the creator of The Shield) four or five years ago, and it really awakened in me what could be done in TV. So I called up Shawn and ended up writing an episode of The Shield. And then I think it was two years ago Shawn said, “Do you want to do a show?” And I said, “No. Not at all.” And he made me come over and sit in a room until we had an idea. I’m trying to remember—here is the really elegant, initial idea, which is what if the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the movie Harper had a child. That’s what this show is intended to be at first, and I think it sort of evolved from there. So, philosophically, I would say I sort of make it up as I go along and hope to get lucky.”-----Executive producer Shawn Ryan on Terriers:“We’ve made all 13 episodes, so we don’t have to be one of these shows that sits in front of you and promises that we know where we’re going. We’ve been there, and hopefully you will like it, and Tim was a very, very instrumental force for all 13 episodes, just really gravitated towards the cable model, loved writing for the show, and was really, really important for the show.”-----Stacy Keach on why the world of boxing is dramatic on upcoming serialized drama Lights Out (which debuts in January and centers on an aging former heavyweight boxing champion who struggles to find his identity and support his wife and three daughters after his fighting days):“I had never had this kind of close-hand experience with the boxing community, and my respect for boxers and what they go through in order to perform what they have to perform in the ring is just enormous. I had no idea what kind of emotional and physical stamina is required in order to sustain the beating that you take when you go into the ring. You’ve got to be able to survive and sustain the tremendous amount of punishment and still come back and do your job.”-----Executive producer and show-runner Warren Leight on Lights Out:“There have been a lot of movies about boxing, but I don’t know that there have been that many TV shows about it. So when we prepped, we watched dozens of mediocre and maybe a dozen great boxing movies and just tried to understand. There’s not just great boxing movies. There’s great boxing literature. It’s been one of the places writers have gone to prove themselves in a way. So we tried to draw on all of that, and what the advantage we have is almost every boxing movie, except for Rocky, which kind of went on and on and on—it’s a one-off. And to serialize a story about the life of a boxer and what it’s like to try to put food on your family’s table when times have changed, to serialize that story over time really allowed us to open it up. The great challenge was to avoid the clichés and make the world come to life. And, of course, there’s usually some truth to the cliché. I hope and think we pulled it off, but we were aware we were walking where others had walked before.”-----Danny DeVito of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which begins season six on Thursday, Sept. 16 at 10 p.m. ET) on the recent Comic-Con gathering:“This year it was just off the charts. You couldn’t go anywhere on the floor—you know, when you’re looking at stuff—I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but this was the biggest Comic-Con they’ve had in attendance, I think, ever. And it was filled from wall to wall with fans of all those movies and all those characters, but I would say 99 percent of them were also Sunny fans. They were just rabid about it, and we loved it. It was so exciting for us because there were, like, 7,000 people in the room. And it’s just mayhem.”------Creator and executive producer Rob McElhenney, who plays Mac, on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:“It was never our intention necessarily to push the envelope. Our goal is always to do what’s not being done elsewhere. And something that we’re really proud of and something that I think the true fans of the show really understand is that we are not simply just going out and trying to push the envelope for pushing the envelope’s sake. We’re trying to introduce into comedy a part of the national conversation that we hear and see people talking about behind closed doors, but aren’t doing in public.”----- Executive producer Jeff Schaffer on the fantasy football element of comedy The League (which opens season two on Thursday, Sept. 16 at 10:30 p.m.):“It’s like 30 million people do play fantasy sports, so while we don’t want to drown people in it, and while it’s not the sort of focus of the show—I think the focus is the dynamics—we’re never afraid of doing it, because a lot of people in our audience has said, “Oh, my God.” Even if you’ve never been in a Fantasy Football league, “Oh, my God. I know someone like that. I know someone who acts that insane on Sundays.” The other thing that we always say is to enjoy the show, you don’t have to know anything about sports. You don’t have to know anything about Fantasy Football.”-----Aisha Tyler on animated sitcom Archer:“Archer is an intellectual show, and it’s also really, really dirty, and it’s for grownups. And I think it’s about time that you have a show that’s sophisticated and elegant and smart and referential and also, you know, really saucy and bawdy. It’s really rare to be surprised by anything in television ever. So the fact that we get these scripts that are surprising and shocking and wonderful and terrible, and they make you cringe and make you laugh and make you call your friends and go, “You have to watch this.” -----Archer executive producer Matt Thompson:“I think the show works best when it does have over-arching storyline, and the characters have to learn something. They have to change a little bit. I love the shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy and stuff, but that’s not this show. I hope that you won’t come back a year later and say, “I am completely bored by Archer. He’s just doing the same thing over and over again.” So there has to be change that goes along into it.”

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TCA: FX Panels Cover Sons of Anarchy, The League

Marc Berman

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