Katey Sagal The Married with Children star talks to Donal O’donoghue about her role in the new Disney+ series, Rebel
From the mouthy Peg Bundy in Married with Children to the scary matriarch of motorcycle gang in Sons of Anarchy, Katey Sagal has long proven her versatility. She talks to Donal O’donoghue about her latest dramatic turn in Rebel
“F or years after I played Peg Bundy, people just thought that was all I could do,” says Katie Sagal of her best-known role in Married With Children. “It wasn’t until (Sons of Anarchy) when my husband (Kurt Sutter) wrote Gemma Teller, that I was actually able to walk into a more dramatic arena. The thing is I don’t consider myself very funny. I always thought I was more of a dramatic person. But when you’re on television as a certain character for many years, people don’t really want you to change. So I’ve hung in there and it has worked out well.”
It sure has. In a life described as colourful by many, not least Sagal herself in her straight-shooting 2017 memoir, Grace Notes: My Recollections, the multi-hyphenate has shoe-horned in a lot. A singer-songwriter who sang back-up for Etta James, Bette Midler and Bob Dylan (before he fired her), she got her screen break opposite Mary Tyler Moore in Mary, played Peg Bundy for 11 seasons, voiced one-eyed Leela in Futurama, was the kick-ass motorcycle matriarch Gemma Teller in Sons of Anarchy and is now Annie ‘Rebel’ Bello in Rebel, a character who, like Sagal, is “on her third husband” and has three children.
Today Katey Sagal (67) is in Zoomland. I’ve got precisely five minutes. Fortunately, the Californian can talk fast and smart. She even nails my name (it’s amazing how many variations you can get). “I’ve been schooled in the right pronunciation thanks to my friend Donal Logue (Sons of Anarchy co-star),” says the actress, who plays ballsy legal advocate Rebel (loosely based on Erin Brockovich who is also an executive producer) in an ageappropriate role. “I believe that the trope about ageism is just as damaging to women as the trope about diversity,” she says. “I feel really strongly that women of my age are still seen as strong, viable, sexy, smart and all those things. We just aren’t represented enough on television or entertainment. There aren’t enough roles written for that age range. If our goal is to be what the world looks like I’m part of what the world looks like..”
Rebel showrunner, Krista Vernoff (Grey’s Anatomy, Station 19), sees Sagal’s casting as a sign of the changing times. “It was such a shock to me that we were allowed to cast someone who was age appropriate without a fight,” she says. That reflected how things are changing in Hollywood and also the power of Katey’s career. She is known for playing flawed complicated women and is simultaneously loved. That combination makes her the perfect Rebel, someone who has three different children by three different men, someone who is exhausting and will talk you into the ground but at the end of the day, you like her.
In researching Rebel, Sagal watched a number of shows, including the Netflix documentary, The Bleeding Edge (a critical investigation of the US’S medical device industry). Did such research make her more aware? “Completely, even watching The Bleeding Edge, which if you haven’t see maybe you should and maybe you’ll think twice about getting your hip replaced. I haven’t hung out with Erin Brockovich enough to know exactly about water being poisoned and forest fires but I know the broad strokes. And over the last year, like many others, I’ve become a lot more aware of things that we weren’t looking closely at.”
So was there any Erin Brockovich in the younger Katey Sagal? “I think young Katey Sagal was a little more self-centred than Erin Brockovich,” she says (following the death of her parents, Sagal spiralled into alcohol and drug dependency through her 20s). “Erin Brockovich or Rebel are not about ego gratification. They are about righting the wrong and young Katey was a little more focused on making a living. Truly, all I knew was how to sing and how to act. I wasn’t even sure I could do that. So I was just trying to pay the rent. But I was intensely trying to pay the rent, I was very driven that way, trying to get a gig wherever I could.”
She still is: still rocking (with The Reluctant Apostles), still rolling, still rebelling. Last week, two days after this interview, Rebel was unexpectedly cancelled by ABC. There would be no season two. Sagal expressed her disappointment in an Instagram post and encouraged her fans and followers to sign a #Saverebel petition, evoking her character’s urge to fight the good fight with the hope that Rebel might find a home elsewhere. “If not, we gave it our all and made our voices heard, which is the message behind Rebel! Always Speak Up!!” Erin Brockovich herself couldn’t have put it better.
I don’t consider myself very funny