As self-professed “companionator” Nero Padilla, Jimmy Smits has made a tremendous impact on the Sons of Anarchy mythology. His romantic ties to Gemma and his business relationship with Jax have both led to plenty of conflict, but have also paved the way for some of the most emotional and memorable moments of the show’s past two seasons.
In a recent conference call with journalists, Jimmy Smits talked about Nero’s bond with the Teller family, his thoughts on the state of television content, and what keeps Nero going. Here are some of the highlights.
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It’s obvious that Nero is feeling conflicted about his relationship with the club. Where is his head at by the end of last week’s episode?
Just where Kurt Sutter likes to keep all of his characters – off kilter. The character started out with this kind of goal to have some kind of exit strategy, and that’s not working at all. And now it’s combined with this pull between his past and “the streets” and these new affiliations that he has with the Sons, and specifically with Gemma and Jax. So there’s a real kind of pull there.
At the end of the episode, you can see that Nero is very torn between wanting to comfort Jax over his loss, and confront him over his betrayal. Do you think he wants to just break away from that partnership, or does he want to teach Jax a lesson?
Kurt’s been really good about people getting their comeuppance. Things that you do come back to bite you. That’s been this recurring kind of shade that he’s had going through all six seasons, and that is a big thematic force. I think another kind of deep, resonant chord that goes through the show is this sense of family, and betrayal, and what betrayal means.
So I don’t know where it’s going. It’s going to materialize in some heavy-duty fashion. But he’s definitely torn right there because, as Gemma has said in the previous episodes, there’s an affinity that Jax has for him. He has many kind of consiglieres in this show that offer advice or that he gets wisdom from in different ways, and I think that Nero realizes that, and with the relationship that has developed with Gemma’s character it’s become even more kind of solidified. But, having said that, his past and where he came from and what all that means is very, very strong as well.
Over the course of the show, we’ve seen Jax struggle to find a good father figure, and even though he and Nero started off wary of each other and maybe a bit untrustworthy, they’ve developed a sort of father/son relationship. Where do you see that relationship going after last week’s episode?
Well, as I mentioned before, this whole thing about Jax having these different voices… If he’s the Hamlet character, he’s had his Horatio, but it hasn’t been just one person. There have been many kind of Horatios that he’s had, and they all kind of serve a different purposes. Yes, with this Nero character coming on board there is this kind of brother relationship, and because of the differences in age I guess it floods over into a father/son kind of thing.
But again, as I mentioned in one of the previous questions, this whole aspect that Kurt deals with in terms of what betrayal is when you’ve formed a relationship, a familial relationship, the whole thing about betrayal and family and what that means is a deep chord, and in this episode you see it again. Jax is betrayed, Nero feels betrayed, Gemma feels betrayed, so everybody’s kind of left off kilter.
We’ll see what happens. Hey, listen, we still have one more episode, so maybe Nero won’t get to exact revenge.
Maybe not. Looking at Nero’s relationship with Gemma, it’s very obvious how much he cares about Gemma and how important that relationship is to him, but do you think that’s important enough to stay his hand? Is Gemma enough to keep him in place and keep him from doing something he may wind up regretting?
I think you hit the nail on the head right there. What has developed over these past two seasons between these two characters… you’ve watched them kind of do this awkward, different kind of courtship. I mean they’re saying “I love you” to each other now, and who would have thought that would have come out of Gemma’s mouth? So it’s very interesting. We’ll see how that all plays out. There’s a definite pull there.
There’s definitely a unique sort of bond between Nero and Gemma. What do you think makes them good for each other?
I feel that there is a bond there because there was a piece of them that was kind of missing, and they kind of found a way to fill in that missing piece, that void that each of them had in their own way. And I’ve liked the way they’ve had to kind of negotiate their lives, realizing what each of them brings to the party at the beginning, what he does, what she is involved in, and they’ve found ways to navigate through all of it.
Your television career started in the mid 1980s – looking back, could you have ever imagined we’d be seeing the kind of television content that we have now?
That’s a great question, because I have traversed a lot of genres, and I’ve gotten to do that in the television arena. Certainly, [Stephen] Bochco will say that for him to pitch NYPD Blue now on network television, he would be hard pressed to get that particular show on the air. But now, with the advent of cable and such, you guys are calling it the golden age of TV. They’ve found these great outlets for writers to be able to paint these very broad canvases, and as Kurt has done here, give insight so it’s not just doctor, lawyer, politician kind of things.
You’re getting an insight to a particular culture, with regards to this motorcycle club, that people haven’t seen before. So they’re learning about all of that, but they’re getting engaged in this whole thing about family and this kind of like Shakespearean undertone that Kurt has put in there. It’s just great to see that we’ve been able to find these kinds of different outlets.
From the moment we met Nero, he’s been looking for the end game. Here we are almost two full seasons later – how does Nero see the end game now?
The end game has morphed into other things. This world that they’re in, there are no easy answers, so that light at the end of the tunnel that he thought he saw… there’s a realization that he has this relationship now that it’s very kind of real, he has this business partnership with the club and the relationship with Jax and that’s very real, and this tug with his past, where he came from, what the streets mean to him, and that is very, very real. So I think in one of the episodes he alludes to something in a kind of jovial way about it’s the Godfather syndrome, I keep getting pulled back in, and I think that’s very much the case with a lot of the characters on the show.
Does Nero still believe that he can finally achieve that goal of getting out?
Oh, yes. Definitely. He has to desperately keep reaching for that, because I think that’s his engine, that’s what keeps him in forward motion. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a straightforward path towards the end game, there’s going to be a lot of curves that he’s going to have to take.
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Sons of Anarchy’s season finale air Tuesday, December 10th at 10pm, exclusively on FX.