Kim Coates Talks the 'Sons of Anarchy' Reunion Ride
Sons of Anarchy fans, the clock is running out. Your chance to enter the Omaze raffle to join Kim Coates (Tig), Charlie Hunnam (Jax), Tommy Flanagan (Chibs), and Mark Boone Junior (Bobby) on their reunion ride ends Thursday night at midnight.
Knowing that the SOA gang always showed up to support the charity One Heart Source — a seven-year-old non-profit Coates’s daughter Kyla helps run that strives to empower vulnerable children around the world with educational programs in Tanzania, South Africa, and Jamaica — Omaze reached out to Coates with the idea of giving one fan and a friend a chance to ride Harleys with the guys, visit a few SOA filming locations, and grab a meal. For as little as a $10 donation (Omaze.com/Harley), you can get your name in the barrel. There are also incentives to donate more (reunion tour T-shirts, sweatshirts, signed scripts, etc.).
“I can’t thank Charlie, Tommy, and Boone enough,” Coates tells Yahoo TV, adding that Theo Rossi (Juice) would gladly have participated, too, but he’s back in New York. “We’re going to meet somewhere in L.A. on a day that no one will know unless they win, and we’re going to take them places, and it’s going to be so monumentally funny rehashing some of the stuff we filmed on that incredible series over the seven years. We’re going to end it having a big lunch, tons of giggles.”
He’s quick to note that you don’t have to ride a motorcycle to enter: “If you’re a girl and you don’t ride, you might ride behind me. If you’re a guy and you bring your pal and you don’t ride, you’ll be in a truck, you’ll be in a car, you’ll be in a helicopter — you’ll be somewhere with us four guys, and we’re going to ride around the streets of L.A. for about an hour, hour and a half, and it’s gonna be amazing.”
It’ll be the first time the foursome have been able to ride together since the series wrapped a year ago. “We’ve all been busy,” says Coates, who just finished his fifth movie of the year, “but Charlie’s been doing King Arthur now for eight or nine months. When I talked to him he said, ‘Coatesy, I haven’t even been on a bike in like six, seven months.’ He’s been on horses. He’s pretty excited.’” (That’s something Hunnam confirmed: “I’m very excited to see all my pals again and go for a ride, it’s been a while,” he said via email. “One Heart Source is a fantastic organization, and this event will be a fun way to support their important work.”)
As for which locations the lucky winner will get to visit, Coates will only say that they’ll tour four “magical spots.” He’ll tease one: "It was Season 4, Episode 1, and the cops pull some of us over and we get chained to these posts and start talking about what we’re going to get Opie for his wedding present. It’s absolutely hysterical. We’re going to go to that spot,” he says. “Back in the early days, there was some massive humor on that show. The last season or two, it got so heavy and sad that it’s going to be nice to take this winner and their guest to a couple of spots that we can rehash some real funny tales of what went on that day. I know that Charlie, and Tommy, and Boone are going to be completely full of beans. This is going to be a fun, fun, fun time for us. It really is.”
A year removed from the show, fans still love seeing Coates sign the occasional tweet from Tig. “Can’t help myself,” he says, laughing. “I know when a tweet needs to be Tig, it needs to be Tig. When it’s KC, it’s KC. I can’t go anywhere without being recognized from that character, and maybe it’s going to be that way for quite some time. … I don’t think the fans have come to grips with it yet. I think they’re having a hard time now that it’s actually over. For me personally, as an actor, it was time to move on. It was time for the show to be over. But I’ll never forget it. The brilliant stuff that [SOA creator] Kurt Sutter wrote and concocted in that crazy head of his — seven seasons, how lucky were we? What a hit. Magic in a bottle.”
Has he ever stopped and wondered where Tig and Venus (the transgender escort played so beautifully by Walton Goggins) would be today? “No, I haven’t, but how amazing was that? There’s no other biker on that show that could have done and gotten away with that love story than Tig Trager, and Walton Goggins put those breasts on and shaved his legs and got into that head space that he had to get into to play Venus — get the f–k outta here. How amazing was that? When we wrapped that [emotional bedroom conversation] after a 16-hour day, we had a standing ovation on the set. One hundred people clapping and crying. He and I stayed on the lot. We had drivers to take us home. They shut the gates, and we drank a bottle of booze, smoked a pack of smokes, and talked about how we will never forget that journey,” Coates says. “As an actor, you want to feel uncomfortable. You want things like that to come your way because otherwise I’d be doing CSI: Saskatoon. I’m from Saskatoon, but like, who cares? I’m so glad that Sutter trusted Tig with some of the most brutal, amazing stuff on that show when he did write for Tig. We all got that — all my brothers did — and I’m so happy for all of us.”
The Sons of Anarchy will live on. Asked what he’d like to see in the SOA attraction/ride at the 20th Century Fox World theme park and resort scheduled to open in Dubai in 2018, Coates says, “I can only imagine that there’s going to be some motorcycles involved somewhere. Hopefully they’ll strap some people into a motorcycle and take them on a bit of a spin. I can’t imagine not being able to do that,” he says. “Maybe they’ll have like little holograms of Tig and Jax and Bobby where you can talk to them or gives kisses on the cheek.”
Related: Fox Theme Park: Our ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Wish List
Fans will also see Coates on a bike again on screen. He rides one in Officer Downe, one of those five films he’s shot this year (others include in the sequel to Goon, an indie with Holly Hunter, and a kids’ film shot in his native Saskatchewan). Based on a graphic novel by Joe Casey, it’s about a cop (Coates) who dies and comes back. “They put his body away on ice because he didn’t have a girlfriend, no wives, no dogs. He was just married to the badge, always busted the bad guys,” he says. “It’s not RoboCop, it’s not Frankenstein. There’s an element of that in it, and it’s super funny and super graphic. Joe wrote an extraordinary script, and I did all my own stunts,” he says. “It’s really amazing to cut my hair, and cut off that goatee, and get fat, get skinny, have accents. It’s the whole reason why I got into this business was to act. I’ll never forget Tig Trager, but boy oh boy, it’s fun to do all these movies again.”
To enter the Omaze raffle for the Sons of Anarchy reunion ride experience, click here. For more information on One Heart Source, click here.
