Sons Of Anarchy’s Kim Coates On Tonight’s Finale: It’s Epic & Disturbing

Ann Murray
Fancast.com

If you’re been watching Sons of Anarchy, tonight’s season finale promises drama that will have you holding on to your seat. Kim Coates, the tough biker better known on the show simply as ‘Trig’, talked to us recently about the surprises that we’re sure to find tonight and let us in on the secrets behind the creepy tough guy roles he’s so used to playing.

Did you guys have fun at the Love Ride? How was that for you?
An absolute blast. It was the first one I had ever been on and Jay Leno is a fan of the show and FX has been really great with Harley Davidson. And all of them over there at Glendale Harley, they really wanted us to be a part of it. Did you ride? Were you there?

We were there when you guys rode out and signed autographs.
Oh that’s cool. Well then you saw some of it. I’ve never been a rock star before. This show with almost twenty thousand bikers and their girlfriends. The girls were lifting their tops off. Come sign my breasts. Take a photo. I mean when we got to Pomona it was just a rock concert for us. It was a very odd experience to say the least but very rewarding to see so many fans digging the show.

Did you get any feedback from the bikers at the event about the show? What they liked about it or what was realistic about it?
Yeah we really did. The main thing that I’m hearing is that it’s really intense and they can’t wait until the next week. The only comment I’ve heard which may be a tad negative is that they wish there were more bike riding. They wish there was more kick ass dirt flying bike stuff. And that’s a fair comment. I think we’ve had of the fourteen shows maybe three or four with kick ass bike riding as far as I’m concerned. But to a man, with Charlie, myself, Tommy, and Johnny Lewis, and Mark Boone Jr., and Theo we all wish we did a little bit more riding. But I guess that will come with the territory right?

[Watch last week's episode on Fancast]

You’re right.
I mean Kurt Sutter who’s running the whole machine with John Linson. The two of them have created a pretty great backdrop for actors and the writing is amazing. We just go into every show and we can’t wait to read the next one to see where it’s gonna go.

Do you guys go riding in your spare time now that you’ve gotten used to it on the show?
We do. I think Johnny Lewis bought a Triumph right away, about two or three months ago. I think a bike is around the corner for most of us. Harley Davidson has become quite a big supporter of the show. I think they were waiting early on to see what type of show Sons Of Anarchy was going to turn out to be. And now that it’s become this critical hit they really want to get behind it. With that being said, I’ve had bikes my whole life, I haven’t has one for twenty-five years. When I was in Canada growing up a bike was just like the best thing. I think in LA it’s a bit crazy here. You know, on the freeways and what not you have to be really smart and know what you’re doing. I’m fifty now, so I like to think I’m a little smarter then when I was eighteen. But I really cant wait to get a motorcycle and I think it’s around the corner.

Can you tell me a little bit about how you got hooked up with the show?
Sure. It was kind of a fluke really to tell you the truth. I met on the pilot way back in December of last year. And I was too young for the character they had me reading for. And they thanked me and I thanked them and I wished them all the best. And then literally five months went by and I wondered what had happened to Sons of Anarchy. And what had happened was they had show the pilot and they wanted to change a couple of the characters around. And they wanted to add a character called Tig. And Kurt Sutter and John Linson got together and they brought me in at five o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon to meet with Kurt and sit down with him. I told him my concerns. I had never done a TV show as a regular before. I had only done movies and the odd arc on TV. So I had never done one. I remembered the pilot being pretty exciting and so well written but there was no Tig in the pilot. So I was very concerned who Tig was going to be. And then Kurt Sutter actually gave me a scene from the next episode after the pilot. And I read the scene and it was realty dark. Like really sociopath dark. And I said to Kurt I don’t know if you’ve seen my work but I’ve done a lot of bad boys and I do creep really well I’ve been told. I like bad guys. I play good guys too but it’s all about the writing for me. So I’m very careful. I’ve never played a pedophile or a rapist. I really have been careful with my bad guys. And I saw this in the writing and I said to Kurt, I’ve got to tell you brother, you’re an amazing writer but I have no interest in playing such a sociopath. And he said to me, I’ll never forget, that’s why I want you because you’ll bring humor and a heart to this guy who is a sergeant at arms. Who is extremely tough and loyal like no other to the club. Like Charlie is, like Ron is, like we all are. The sergeant at arms doesn’t take any shit from anybody. And so I’m glad I said yes and I’m glad that we worked out the deal very late. Literally we signed it at ten thirty at night and I was supposed to start the next day at five o’clock in the morning. And Kurt knew that I was a big rider because he saw me in Skinwalkers. I was on a Harley that whole movie. So that worked out and I literally was on a Harley Davidson throwing on some costume not knowing what I was going to say in the pilot seven hours after I signed. It was a freaky experience to me.

So you didn’t really have to learn how to get on a bike because you already had some experience.
Yeah no worries there. I mean I probably hadn’t been on a Harley for ten to fifteen years. But once you have ridden a bike in your whole life it’s not a problem. It wasn’t a problem for me at all. I love it.

How do you get into that dark character? How do you get into his mind and his personality?
Well that’s a great question. Shooting the twelfth of the thirteen shows, which we showed [last week], it was so depressing for me, for Kim. Because of some of the stuff that I end up doing in the show. It’s just so epic. It’s so harsh and one of those, no don’t do it. It’s not really my fault but he takes fault. And what I read it was just so internally sad that even watching it last night was disturbing for me. But for Tig I don’t know. It’s all about the writing for me. And all of a sudden you throw a cast like the one we’ve got together and I start putting on the leather, the jeans, boots, and the knives and I figure out how I’m going to talk now. And Kurt Sutter continues with all of these great writers keep throwing in stuff like my character is freaked out by dolls. I mean where does that come from? And that he has two daughters and their names are Dawn and Fawn. So there’s a lot of background stuff that you really have to piece together and figure out in your mind. And so how does any actor who is worth their salt do it I guess? You just are not afraid to fail. I really am truly not afraid to fail. And so I hope that’s working and it certainly has been rewarding to me. It’s been very intense.

Do you think we’ll ever get to see this mysterious side of Tig?
There’s what? Ten leads? I mean Charlie, Ron, and Katey are the top leads. Then you have nine of us that are all really great actors and we all love one another. I’m not in the pilot much and that’s fine because I just got cast and I had a lot to do in the first episode. But then by three I was huge and I read the fourth episode and I was hardly in it. And I walked up to Jack LoGuidice who wrote it and I said Jack what do I have to take? And he said no, no, no we have to save you. We have to be smart, we can’t give it all away. So we are part of a team and I guess you’re finding out the mysterious side of Tig a little bit. Like he’s into Latino women. The first episode we show there were a couple of Latino gals who were unfortunately caught in the warehouse situation and died. They were my girls so we find that out. We find out I’ve got a couple of daughters. Like all the characters we find there is some hidden stuff there and we continue to be really interesting.

I got into the show recently but at first I was hesitant because it seemed like a guy’s show. But I fell in love with it. I think it’s a fantastic show. So why do you think women shouldn’t be afraid to get into this tough guy show?
What we’ve seen of the last five or six weeks of the ratings and it’s a big hit with like five million viewers. FX has never seen anything quite like it. The Shield has been it’s marker an Damages is a great show but we need to get more people watching that. Nip/Tuck is sort of finding it’s way again and Rescue Me. I mean there’s a lot of shows but Sons of Anarchy has been a huge hit for them. Now what I’ve been told by Jack, Jim, and Kurt Sutter is that women are piling on every week more and more. I think there’s two reasons for that. Number one, Charlie Hunnam, if there’s a cuter tough guy than him out there I don’t know him. I mean if I was a chick I’d be turned on too. He’s just a sweet kid and he’s a great actor. I just love working with him. And he looks great with his clothes off and on so that’s a good thing for women. Number two you’ve got this Katey Sagal character who is a genius woman and a genius actor. She’s got this lady Macbeth quality but it’s about family. And what’s going to happen with the baby. And you’ve got Dendrie Taylor and Maggie Siff, these two girls with Charlie. Where’s it all going to end up? There is a real woman feel to the show even though we’re bikers. There really is. It’s fifty-fifty. There is this quality of women and men and wives and mothers and babies. There’s a family quality to bikers. We’re called Sons of Anarchy and we’re pretty tough guys but there’s a huge women element to the show. And you bet if girls get over that “Oh it’s just a biker show” if they actually get into the writing and actually gave it a shot. My daughter who is at UCLA, she texts me all the time while they’re watching. They have like forty people watching it in their dorms. It’s crazy, they’re going through Sons of Anarchy withdraw already. Dad what am I gonna do? So girls are watching it. Why? I guess for all of those reasons.

We also talked to Katey and she talked about how not only are you guys like a family on set but also off set. You guys all get along. You guys go play golf and go do guy things together. What type of stuff do you do with your cast mates?
Last night for example I saw Theo Rossi. He’s going to New York today to see his girl and get back there. So we went to dinner at this place that we hang out at a lot in Hollywood. So that was fun. Booney, me, and Ron have played golf a couple of times together. Pearlman is a big golfer as am I. He unfortunately is over in Europe doing this big honking ass movie wit Nick Cage called Season of the Witch. It’s going to be huge. So he literally finished the show on Wednesday morning and got on a flight Wednesday night for Austria. We e-mail each other all the time but I think he’s going to be exhausted when he gets back. But he’ll have a good month to get ready for the new season. That’s all we do. We just hang, we talk, we play golf and pool. And Katey is right, there’s not an ego in the bunch, it’s just great.