What has been your favorite scene to film so far?

Perlman: I couldn’t answer that.  Every single scene that I’ve done has been, like, I can’t even put into words what a great writer Kurt Sutter is and what an amazing staff he’s assembled because every script is just filled with scenes you can’t wait to do. The most surprising episode was, I think, the fifth episode.  It’s called AK51, and it was written by a woman named Nicole Beattie and it’s basically a script that could only have been written by a woman and it deals with one of the things I alluded to earlier, the fact that Katey’s body and my body are going through these changes and there’s some amazing stuff in there that comes as a surprise to both of us and the playing of those things was pretty surprising and revealing.  I just can’t wait to get to work every day because these scenes are just like hanging fastballs, hanging curveballs, as the pitch is coming in you just lick your lips waiting …

Can you take us through a typical day on the set?

Perlman: No, because we don’t have any typical days.  Every single day is a complete different set of problems.  Every single day is not like any other day.  You just try to make sure that you’re well nourished and you’ve got enough energy to get through it because they’re very often 14, 15, or 16 hours long and we’re moving at a really quick pace because we’re shooting an episode in seven days, and the workload is overwhelmingly concentrated and focused.

I was wondering if there are any of your own personality traits which help you tap into that kind of criminal archetype?

Perlman: He’s about as far from my own approach to life as anyone I’ve ever played but having said that, as an actor you’re always using your own facets behaviorally to loan the character his reality, and I can only play Clay as I can access him from my own field of experience.  But he’s really, really, really different from me and, as I said before, a challenge because of that because I’ve got to adjust my point of view and my way of processing a situation.  I don’t process situations the way he does.

How does the effect of the club being like a family balance with the toughness of the jobs the guys go out and do and everything else on that side of things?

Perlman: These clubs are a subculture that are unique to themselves but you can parallel them as every club as its own sovereign nation with its own set of laws and its own earning capacity and its own code of behavior and its own ruthless need to protect its borders and its national interests, and you can take any country in the world and set the same description to it.  So it’s more than a family but there are certainly family values to each of these clubs because at the end of the day they’re there to protect their own, they’re there to support their own, and they’re there to sacrifice themselves for their own family.

What kind of audience do you think Sons of Anarchy will draw?

Perlman: A big one.  I don’t know, I can only hope.  I can never second guess what happens when you take a piece of culture and try to funnel it into the mainstream.  I’ve been wrong almost every time before so I’ve stopped guessing.  I hope people like it for its uniqueness and for the effort that everybody’s putting in, which is a pretty magnanimous effort.

Now as a follow-up to the question about bike culture and everything else like that, did you know anything about bike culture before starting the series and had you ever been on a bike, did you know anything about the ins and outs of anything?

Perlman: I knew zero.  I’d see motorcycle clubs whiz by like the rest of us and just consider it to be very loud and an annoyance and I just thought that these guys were men without a country, just purely rebellious.  I never thought about it beyond that.  I’d never been on a bike, I don’t have that in my own fun psyche, so everything I did was kind of filling in a very blank slate, and my eyes got really opened to the sociopolitical aspects of the impulse to start these clubs.  And most of the guys who are members of these clubs were veterans, probably most of them fought in wars, in different wars, the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, the current Iraq war, so they’re warriors to begin with, and they come back to America after the most patriotic of acts, which is the act of self sacrifice for their country and not only are they not welcomed as heroes but they’re kind of shunned because their psyche is such that it’s okay for a warrior to go kill and die but it’s not okay for them to come back to the United States and marry your sister. So it’s kind of like, if you don’t mind a little salty language, fuck me, fuck you. I’m out of here.  I’m going to go create my own reality.  I’m going to show you what patriotism really looks like and I’m going to be patriotic to what I consider to be things that are worth living and dying for.  And that’s the impulse behind the motorcycle club and it’s very, very anarchistic and very sociopolitical.  It’s a reaction against something, which turned into a huge disappointment. Those are the things that, when my eyes were really opened as to how compelling these clubs are.

There’s a scene in the second episode where Gemma is looking for John Tyler’s manuscript and she finds a photo of herself and John and Clay and a fourth person, a woman, presumably.  Did Clay have a first wife that you know of, according to Kurt Teller?  Is Gemma his second wife, and do you think he has any kids?

Perlman: He has no kids, I can tell you that for sure.  I don’t know whether he’s had another wife.  That was a wedding photo, could’ve been a girlfriend at the time.  I haven’t seen the second episode so—

They’ve got to send you stuff.

Perlman: Yes, I know.  I guess I’ll see it on September 10th—Along with the rest of America.  So no, I’m sorry, I can’t answer that on whether he was ever married.

If you could write any scene for Clay or have him do something, what would you choose for him to do?

Perlman: First of all, I’m not a writer.  That’s why I’m an actor is because if I could do anything I wanted I would write but I don’t have those bones, and second of all I’m in a situation here where the writing goes so far beyond my limited imagination that it blows my mind every time I read a new script.  I’m just happy to be able to portray what they’re giving me.  I don’t have anything that could top or add to what I’ve already seen.

What kind of different challenges do you find between working for television as opposed to movies, since you’ve been in a lot of movies?

Perlman: Well, the approach is the same.  The general work is the same.  The only difference is with a TV series you go a lot faster, you have to get more stuff done in a day than you do in a movie because the constraints of the schedule are really austere.  So it’s speed, and it’s concentration and focus because it’s relentless.  I mean, you finish one episode at midnight on a Tuesday and then on Wednesday morning at seven you’re in the makeup chair getting ready to start the next one without having a chance to take a breath in between.  So that’s basically the difference, but fundamentally you approach the work the same way.

Were you surprised at the level of violence in the show?

Perlman: Well, I’m not surprised by the level of violence in the show.  I knew these were pretty ruthless, rough guys, but there are certain things that we’re doing that shock even me, and I thought I was shockproof.  It’s pretty hardcore.  I mean, you start getting to the third episode, the fourth episode, the fifth episode, I mean, we do stuff that is like—I finished reading it and I was just like, I’ve got to lie down.  It’s definitely—the envelope is being breached.