'Executioner' actors, creator: Outlaws are outlaws

STEPHEN MOYER was less surprised than I that Kurt Sutter would follow his outlaw bikers drama, "Sons of Anarchy," with "The Bastard Executioner" (10 tonight, FX), a show set in 14th-century Wales.

"Thematically, it's absolutely in Kurt's wheelhouse," the former "True Blood" star said in a joint interview with "Executioner" star Lee Jones last month.

Both had flown in from Wales, where the show is shot, for promotional activities that included talking about Welsh castles while perched high over West Hollywood, on the wraparound terrace at Soho House.

" 'The Shield' [on which Sutter got his start as a TV writer] is about a group of boys scratching against kind of the ethics of society, and that is definitely what happens in 'Sons.' Our heroes in this story are not just some kind of nice boys who happen to be dressed in green tights and merry men. They kill people within the first 10 minutes . . . and they're our heroes," Moyer said.

Not that Moyer, best known as HBO's sensitive vampire, is even that heroic in this.

"It's lovely, isn't it?" said Moyer, gleefully, of his character, Milus Corbett, the conniving aide to a local despot (Brian F. O'Byrne) and the man most likely to succeed in making the show's title character appear sympathetic.

That would be Jones, whose character, Wilkin Brattle's, journey from soldier to peasant to reluctant professional "punisher" is covered in tonight's two-hour-plus premiere.

"It's really the idea of vengeance, and revenge" that ties "Sons of Anarchy" to "The Bastard Executioner," Jones said.

Going into the project, "All I knew was that he [Sutter] was interested in the idea of being stuck between a rock and a hard place," Jones said.

Becoming an executioner is "simply a matter of survival for my character. [He's] a man on the run from violence, from himself, as well. And also, what is a huge idea in this is trying to find a higher purpose for yourself, and that's really what my character's doing, so he's having to survive by living this lie of being the executioner, but also sticking with it because there's maybe a higher purpose."

An Australian actor with Welsh roots, Jones had never visited Wales before he was cast.

It turned out to be full of castles - a reflection of its turbulent history - and though the production made use of at least two of them, Caerphilly and St. Donat's, it also had one built.

"I think, when Kurt got to Wales, that history [of conflict] perhaps caught him by surprise and it drove him," Jones said.

"What's beautiful as well," Moyer said, is that they are shooting in places that would have been contemporary to the story, "in castles that our characters would have existed in. Which is extraordinary, isn't it?"

"I've never been to a Renaissance faire in my life," Sutter said in a separate interview.

He is, however, a history buff, and though the show employs a researcher, "initially, it was so much fun for me to be able to immerse myself in the history of it all."

"Wilkin and his guys, they're outlaws. They're outliers. And to me, those characters, the conflict is much more crisp and vivid, internally as well as externally. So I think I'm drawn to those sort of outsiders . . . but I didn't really go into this project with an agenda for that."