‘Sons of Anarchy’ Interview: Maggie Siff Discusses Tara and Jax’s Troubled Marriage and the Future

On Sons of Anarchy, Tara’s been through a lot of turmoil since she returned to Charming and decided to be with Jax. Despite his desire to provide a safer environment for his boys, he’s been unable to pull himself out of the dangerous world. With Tara’s future uncertain, she moves to protect her sons with or without his support.

Maggie Siff spoke with reporters about Tara and Jax’s troubled marriage, Tara’s priorities, and the decision to cut Tara’s hair. Here are edited excerpts of her responses.

On the troubles in Tara and Jax’s marriage

I think that they’re in such a disconnected place from each other right now.  I think that at the end of season five we saw just incredible disillusionment on both their parts with the other person.  I think Jax is feeling the sting of her betrayal in terms of trying to set things up so that the kids would be given to Wendy and she was feeling the sting of his betrayal in terms of a real lack of support for her priorities in terms of getting out and getting her kids into a safe place and also some of the more violent and terrifying aspects of his nature that were revealed to her at the end of last season.

[When Tara’s in prison,] she’s using the time to really collect her thoughts and create a plan for herself in terms of what she’s going to do to protect herself and her kids because nobody else is going to help her, and that includes Jax.  Therefore, she can’t expose herself to him because it would be too difficult.

On the silent reunion between Tara and Jax when she was released from prison

There was no dialog scripted.  There was some conversation about how we shoot it and what kind of looks get exchanged and how much gets communicated without language.  The way that our director, Peter Weller, wanted to shoot it was really that they’re both pretty inscrutable to each other and are content to have it be that way.  I really liked the way it turned out.  I thought it was very jarring, interesting and provocative.  

On Tara’s reaction during sex with Jax in “One One Six” and the difficulty of filming the scene

I was just sad.  You know, well, filming those scenes is always so awkward.  It’s just further evidence of their disconnect and going through the motions.  Charlie and I have a real shorthand for how we do those things and deal with those thing and talk about those things. We talked about it and were like, “Alright, here we go” and we did it and it was sad and hard, but I think it was a good moment for the show, to show the depth of how disconnected they are, that even in the middle of that they couldn’t be further apart.

On Tara’s shorter hair cut

You know, I had been wanting to cut my hair for a long time.  At the end of last season I talked to Kurt about it and he was like, “Yes, let’s do it” once we knew that she was going to prison. For the episodes when she’s in prison is that it not look too done.  The thing that I ended up feeling before I cut my hair was that it would be a really good thing for the character and for the season because it’s tougher. 

There’s something about losing the hair that’s a little bit like losing the part of her that is submissive, I think, to Jax and to the club and losing that really feminine edge I think is a really good thing for the season and for the character.  It all ended up coming together.

Sons of Anarchy airs on Tuesdays at 10 pm ET on FX.

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(Image courtesy of FX.)