Why Charlie Hunnam Dropped Out of ‘Fifty Shades’: ‘The Worst Professional Experience of My Life’
Charlie Hunnam is best known for playing Jax Teller on Sons of Anarchy for seven seasons. But if things would have gone differently, he would have also been known for playing Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.
Hunnam accepted the role after developing a friendship with director Sam Taylor-Johnson. But he had to back out at the last minute. The actor now calls this the “worst professional experience” of his life.
Charlie Hunnam dropped out of ‘Fifty Shades’ due to a scheduling conflict and loyalty
In the last season of Sons of Anarchy, Hunnam was planning for the next stage of his career. That resulted in him accepting roles in two films: Fifty Shades of Grey and Guillermo Del Toro’s gothic romance Crimson Peak.
But the filming schedule for those movies seriously overlapped with Hunnam’s Son of Anarchy schedule, and the actor had to make a tough choice: which project to drop. He ultimately chose to drop the leading role with massive box office potential instead of the smaller-budget film in which he was a supporting character.
“I’d given Guillermo my word, over a year before, that I was going to do this film,” Hunnam told Variety. “People were saying, ‘Are you crazy? Guillermo still has got four months to recast, it’s the fourth lead, you can go and do this [instead].’ I said, ‘I can’t. He’s my friend, I’ve done a film with him, I gave him my word.’”
Charlie Hunnam calls it the ‘worst professional experience’ of his life
Hunnam explained that he is a “pretty mercurial and a very difficult, long-winded decision maker at the best of times.” He noted that dropping out of Fifty Shades of Grey was “deeply unpleasant and challenging emotionally” because he prides himself on being a professional. And, it means a lot to him to be “a man of keeping my word.”
The actor says that he just “didn’t know what to do,” so he ended up calling Johnson personally to tell her what was going on. Hunnam recalls both he and Johnson crying their eyes out for 20 minutes, but he needed to tell her “this was not going to work.”
“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**king overwhelmed and I was sort of having panic attacks about the whole thing,” Hunnam confessed.
“It was the worst professional experience of my life. It was the most emotionally destructive and difficult thing that I’ve ever had to deal with professionally, it was heartbreaking.”
Charlie Hunnam insists the nudity in ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ wasn’t a problem
When Hunnam dropped out of Fifty Shades, rumors swirled that he made the decision because of the sexual nature of the film. But he says that’s simply not true — the decision was made based on scheduling conflicts.
He pointed to his early work on Queer as Folk as proof that he had no problems with nudity and sexual content.
“When I was 18 I was getting f***ed in the ass, completely naked on national TV, you know?” he said.
After Hunnam dropped out of the film, Johnson hired Irish actor Jamie Dornan to co-star alongside Dakota Johnson. Fifty Shades of Grey pulled in more than $569 million at the global box office, and it was followed up by Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.
Meanwhile, Hunnam has gone on to star in numerous films like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, The Lost City of Z, and The Gentleman.
