On a recent conference call with actor Ron Perlman for FX's Sons of Anarchy, in which the Hellboy hero takes on the role of president of the Sons of Anarchy biker gang, we had the chance to ask one question before other outlets followed in the same manner. What we wanted to know most was how Perlman got interested in a role that's so drastically different than characters we come to see him embody in recent years. As the head of a fictional biker gang, in which its members often dispense their own form of violent, vigilante justice, it's not like Perlman will be playing a hero on the same scale as Hellboy, with the same moral fortitude.

With Sons of Anarchy about to ride on to the FX airwaves on Wednesday, September 3, here's a look at our own brief but interesting time with Ron Perlman and some of the other engaging highlights from our call.

THE DEADBOLT: What was it about Clay Morrow that got you interested in the first place?

RON PEARLMAN: To tell you the absolute truth, the first time I read it I wasn’t sure I could play the guy. I’ve never played anybody like him. No matter how sociopathic or psychotic the character was that I was playing, I always saw something in there that made them that way so that there was always some sort of a duality, like Hellboy is a badass but he has this really soft center. He’s got a very strong feminine side.

There was always a duality in all the characters I’ve played no matter how radical they were. There’s no duality in Clay Morrow. He’s got one gear and it’s win at all costs, and he’s not big on sense of humor. He has no feminine side whatsoever and I really didn’t know whether I could, whether I had the chops to pull it off.

So I said to myself, there seem to be more people on the periphery who thought I could do it than I thought I could do it, so I figured I’d put my trust and faith in them and use it as a big challenge because the one thing I do love is to be challenged and to be kind of on the tree limb, where one false move either way and you’re toast. I kind of like that, so I took this thing as a challenge and we’ll see. So far I’m having a good time, I’m exercising different muscles than I’ve ever used before.

Other Conference Call Highlights:

Ron Perlman on how he broke into acting:

"I couldn’t make it on the swimming team in high school. In fact, I got thrown off the swimming team and was forced to audition for the school play because they had at the audition about 35 girls show up and no boys. So my swimming coach suggested that I might be able to do the drama department more good than I was doing the swimming team. Why he had that instinct, I don’t know, but the rest is history."

On the relationship between Clay and Jax and its similarities to Hamlet:

"Well, I’m only reading it one episode at a time and I’m just a little bit ahead of you. I have no idea how it’s going to play out. I pretty much have an idea of what is going to happen, particularly in light of the fact that I’m sure they’re going to stick to the structure of Hamlet all the way to the end. But how it happens and when it happens, we’ll have to just see one episode at a time. But yes, they’re very tight. I mean, there’s a real affection between Clay and Jax, a real affection.

How Gemma and Clay ended up in a relationship:

"I would suspect that Clay probably felt that John got the prize when he got Gemma and wouldn’t be surprised if Clay maybe always had a secret design on Gemma. I’m not giving you a definitive answer, because I just don’t know the answer, but I’m telling you some of the things that I’m thinking as the actor playing the guy. And I think that knowing what I know about how thorough Kurt Sutter is in answering all these questions, we will all find out at pretty much the same time."

"It’s incredibly smart; very, very, very vivid, completely ungratuitous for a show’s that's as hardcore and violent and explosive and radical behavior. These are not your average conservative Republicans, these guys are ruthless and badass. And the way it’s depicted is very organic, which you could only do if you’re a brilliant screenwriter, as Kurt Sutter is. And, as an actor, you know you’re always going to be supported by - you’re never going to be made to look gratuitous or silly because everything is incredibly well supported in a very organic and very brilliant way."

Perlman and the amount of researching he did on the biker culture:

"Not as much as I would have liked. I’m continuing to do research into biker culture. I got kind of thrown into this thing with no prep time, so I just basically dove in with two legs, with two feet, and started playing him and have picked up things. You know, we have a tech advisor who’s a member of the Oakland Chapter of the Hells Angels named D.L., he’s one of the most famous guys in that club. Whenever I get a break in the action, I sit and chit-chat with him.

"Charlie’s done time up there, he’s spent serious time up there learning, immersing himself in the subculture, and whenever I have a minute I pick his brain, I learn from him. And I feel as if I have enough of a foundation where I’ve got a pretty strong point of view about where Clay is coming from and what his core values are, but I really would like to learn more because the more I know about them the more fascinating they become to me."

On his character struggling with arthritis and losing control:

"Well, the aspect of him beginning to lose control, the arthritis, it’s not acute yet. I ‘s the onset of arthritis, which is basically the first signal that somebody who always considered himself unbreakable and invulnerable is starting to see the beginnings of cracks in his armor. So when we meet this guy, he’s going through changes, as is Gemma, because she’s now 51 years old. These guys who started out as kids and thought that they had the world figured out are now finding out that there are certain things that there aren’t answers to, and it makes for a very charged situation."

Perlman on working with Katey Sagal:

"She’s a doll. I mean, I just saw the pilot episode. You guys are kind of ahead of me because I haven’t seen the second one at all and I only just saw the pilot episode the night before last, and it was staggering to me that the baddest ass on the show is Katey. I mean, we’re all trying to play these big swinging dudes who are completely ruthless and fearless and in watching the first episode, I didn’t realize that she’s the bad ass of the show.

"She even makes me look a little weak, which is a complete dichotomy to how she is in real life. She’s so sweet, she’s a great mom and a beautiful working companion and full of kindness and caring. She’s kind of like a hippie, she’s like how all of us who came through the ‘60s turned out, a little left of center, very liberal-minded, and that’s a complete performance she’s giving on the show, but it is complete."

His favorite or most surprising scene since filming began:

"The most surprising episode was, I think, the fifth episode. It’s called AK51, and it was written by a woman named Nicole Beattie, and it’s basically a script that could only have been written by a woman and it deals with one of the things I alluded to earlier - the fact that Katey’s body and my body are going through these changes and there’s some amazing stuff in there that comes as a surprise to both of us. And the playing of those things was pretty surprising and revealing. I just can’t wait to get to work every day because these scenes are just like hanging fastballs, hanging curveballs, as the pitch is coming in you just lick your lips waiting."

On the family aspect of the biker club:

"These clubs are a subculture that are unique to themselves, but you can parallel them as every club as its own sovereign nation with its own set of laws and its own earning capacity, and its own code of behavior and its own ruthless need to protect its borders and its national interests. And you can take any country in the world and set the same description to it. So it’s more than a family but there are certainly family values to each of these clubs because at the end of the day they’re there to protect their own, they’re there to support their own, and they’re there to sacrifice themselves for their own family.

Ron Perlman on how much he actually knew about the biker culture before joining Sons of Anarchy:

"I knew zero. I’d see motorcycle clubs whiz by like the rest of us and just consider it to be very loud and an annoyance. And I just thought that these guys were men without a country, just purely rebellious. I never thought about it beyond that. I’d never been on a bike. I don’t have that in my own fun psyche, so everything I did was kind of filling in a very blank slate. And my eyes got really opened to the socio-political aspects of the impulse to start these clubs.

"And most of the guys who are members of these clubs were veterans, probably most of them fought in wars, in different wars - the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, the current Iraq war, so they’re warriors to begin with. And they come back to America after the most patriotic of acts, which is the act of self sacrifice for their country, and not only are they not welcomed as heroes but they’re kind of shunned because their psyche is such that it’s okay for a warrior to go kill and die but it’s not okay for them to come back to the United States and marry your sister.

"So it’s kind of like, if you don’t mind a little salty language, "F**k me, f**k you." I’m out of here. I’m going to go create my own reality. I’m going to show you what patriotism really looks like and I’m going to be patriotic to what I consider to be things that are worth living and dying for. And that’s the impulse behind the motorcycle club and it’s very, very anarchistic and very socio-political. It’s a reaction against something, which turned into a huge disappointment. Those are the things that, when my eyes were really opened as to how compelling these clubs are.