Charlie Hunnam

Hunnam previews his Apple TV+ passion project, plus shares the slew of medical problems filming brought on.

We shot the pilot in India and Australia before COVID and then, because of [the Delta variant], we couldn’t go back to India [and had to reshoot]. Incarceration, freedom, and what that meant to him is at the forefront of his new existence on the run. Then I got an ear infection in both ears, and conjunctivitis. Charlie Hunnam: [He’s on a] collision course between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of gold. Plus, learn more about the series in the video interview with Hunnam and co-star In the drama, premiering Friday, October 14, Hunnam’s fugitive struggles to avoid trouble after prison but falls for an enigmatic woman.

Almost 20 years in the making, the adaptation of Gregory David Roberts' best-selling novel finds an action star in Hunnam.

As the show loosens up, and Hunnam’s role starts to breathe, we see more – within a few episodes Ford sets up shop in the same slum as his tour guide-cum-best friend Prabhu (an impish, charming Shubham Saraf) – and the show, like a traveller figuring things out, breaks free from the tourist clichés. It’s hard not to consider what kind of freewheeling energy early 2000s Depp might have lent this role (and also whether a two-hour movie framework would have helped cut the flab), but Hunnam is at least down for the ride. At the time, Depp was in full Jack Sparrow mode, swinging between Pirates of the Caribbean sequels and putting a bizarro spin on Wonka for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. From there, he lived in Mumbai, working variously as a medical expert and also for the local mafia. And in place of Depp, there should be Charlie Hunnam, a Geordie best known for playing a Californian motorcyclist on Sons of Anarchy. bought the film rights to the literary sensation, and planned an adaptation with Johnny Depp in the lead role of Lindsay Ford.

Charlie Hunnam makes his return on television on Apple TV+'s Shantaram, premiering Oct. 14. Find out why this was finally the project to bring him back in ...

"Seven years ago, I read Shantaram and it became an obsession for me to be part of the creative team that would bring this adaptation to screen," he revealed. "It was really a balancing act," he said of weighing his career options. "I worked with a dialect coach. "I had a few opportunities, particularly over the last five years, to get involved with things that would have been really extraordinary." "I just tried to stay in it as much as possible. "I knew I wanted to return to long-form and it was just having the conviction to believe that Shantaram would actually would come through and give me the confidence to actually turn down those other great opportunities that I got."

Even when one is wishing that “Shantaram” would turn up the narrative heat a bit, it's a gorgeous, engaging drama with strong performances.

There’s a version of “Shantaram” that achieves much of the same depth of character while also operating with a little more urgency and giving a little more than this one does in a season finale. However, even when one is wishing that “Shantaram” would turn up the narrative heat a bit, it’s an engaging drama. “Sons of Anarchy” star Charlie Hunnam returns to TV, doing excellent work as a bank robber who escapes an Australian prison in the premiere, ultimately finding himself halfway around the world in the city of Bombay in the ‘80s. And again, it’s a story of a white man finding himself in a non-white country, a tale that has been told often, including just this year in “Tokyo Vice.” Will it be enough that “Shantaram” is well-made television from top to bottom, a character study that’s richly told and nuanced in its detail? Watching the strong new drama “Shantaram,” premiering on October 14, it’s hard not to be stunned by the scope of it all, shooting on location with a large cast that’s telling a story that unfolds across multiple subplots. Every once in a while, there will be a “Ted Lasso” or a “Severance,” but most of their dramas are very expensive and very under-seen.

Gregory David Roberts' autobiographical novel about an outsider who gets involved in the underworld of Mumbai in the '80s makes for a riveting TV.

The protagonist is a white man in an ocean of brown faces. There’s nothing stiff or stuffy about “Shantaram,” but the quality is high enough to qualify as prestige television, a term that gets harder to define by the day. The ponytailed Hunnam gives him a sort of hippie-like sheepishness to go with his capacity for danger; he can’t help but find himself in one mess after another, his good intentions clouded by questionable motives. Hunnam (“Sons of Anarchy”) plays Lin Ford, an Aussie looking for a place to get lost. The ’80s Bombay of “Shantaram” is an anything-goes zone, a “Casablanca” with an extra touch of desperation. It’s the kind of place where an expat can get into a lot of trouble but also find himself, which is exactly what Charlie Hunnam’s Lin does in this sprawling Apple TV+ series, a feast of sharp storytelling that makes 12 episodes go by in a flash.