If you didn鈥檛 already know Katey Sagal from her role as tacky housewife Peg Bundy in the long-running Fox sitcom Married 鈥� With Children, you might have discovered her later as Gemma Teller Morrow, the leather-clad mother hen of a California biker gang in the FX drama Sons of Anarchy.
But the actor, 63, has led a life as colourful as any of her characters, some of which you can read about in her memoir Grace Notes: My Recollections, released this year. Raised in a showbiz family in Los Angeles 鈥� her parents were introduced by Norman Lear 鈥� she spent years trying to make it big in music, toiling as a singing waitress and performing backup for Bob Dylan, Etta James and Bette Midler.
Sagal released an album of covers in 2013 and performs regularly with her band, the Reluctant Apostles.
The mother of three returned to her sitcom roots last year with Superior Donuts, in which she stars as Officer Randy DeLuca, a cop in a rapidly gentrifying Chicago neighbourhood. The series has returned to CBS on Mondays for a second season.
Q: Gemma was a complicated woman. What do you think of her now that you have a little distance from the show?
A: I have enormous affection for her. She was so loyal to family, which is kind of my value system as well, but with an entirely different approach to that loyalty.
I didn鈥檛 think at all that she was a bad person. It was really fun to play somebody that had such base instincts, and followed through with them. You know she didn鈥檛 just think about kicking your ass, she would kick your ass. We all have that instinct, but we don鈥檛 always act on it.
Q: Your husband, Kurt Sutter, was the showrunner and creator of Sons of Anarchy. Was it challenging to work together like that and would you do it again?
A: I would always work with him. He鈥檚 a really great writer. We definitely had our growing pains when we first started it, because the tendency was to bring it all home. We found a really good boundary in that he was the writer and I was the actor. What I really learned by living with [a writer] is my job as an actor is to interpret what they鈥檙e creating, it鈥檚 not to say 鈥渢his is what I think should happen.鈥�
Q: Between Peggy and Gemma, you鈥檝e played two characters with very distinct looks. Does that help you as a performer?
A: Oh, yes, absolutely. With Peg I liked the idea of playing a character who really didn鈥檛 look like me. That I could then slip into my other life and it wouldn鈥檛 be a big deal. When I would take all that drag off, I would look completely different, whereas Ed [O鈥橬eill] couldn鈥檛 do that as well. I remember at the height of Married 鈥� With Children, and we would be going somewhere and people would just be screaming 鈥淎l Bundy!鈥� And I could go along pretty much unnoticed.
With Sons [of Anarchy] there was something about fitting into the leather, and the shoes, and just the whole look that definitely helped define her toughness.
Q: Did you keep anything from Sons of Anarchy? Gemma had some pretty cool leather.
A: I kept one piece 鈥� in the pilot she wore this long leather coat. And I have that coat. And I have the Peg Bundy wig in a plexiglass box at our house in Idaho, in a cool place so it doesn鈥檛 disintegrate.
Q: So what motivated the change to acting?
A: I was very adamantly not going to be an actor. Music was my first love. I was going to be a singer-songwriter. I made two records, then I would get backup gigs and go on the road. But when I was in my late 20s it started to dawn on me that this isn鈥檛 really happening. These friends of mine asked me to be in a musical and I got spotted by a theatrical agent. Then within six months I started working, and then within nine months I was on television. It happened very quickly, but it was kind of a conscious decision. I didn鈥檛 want to keep being a struggling artist.
Q: Do you think it helped that you didn鈥檛 have your heart set on it?
A: Oh, yeah, 100 per cent. I got asked by CBS to come read for this sitcom, Mary. Danny Devito was the director, and it was with Mary Tyler Moore. And I was like, are you kidding? I just went in not caring if I got it and not nervous because I just thought this is not what I do. It was the greatest lesson in not putting too much emphasis on the results.
