[on the strong fan backlash regarding "Tara" on
Sons of Anarchy (2008)] I think it's a really interesting conversation. I think these shows are always set up so we follow a protagonist and the story is very intricately built around caring for them in some way. And so anybody who runs counter to that is going to run into the problem of people turning on them. But I also think there are pretty deep gender cultural issues that have to do with a certain kind of fantasy of male and female roles, and a certain kind of fantasy around this anti-hero -the man who does terrible, terrible things but who we root for anyway because it's an enactment of an adolescent male fantasy that people take great pleasure in seeing played out. And people who run counter encounter a lot of hostility. I think it's the hostility that's the most disturbing thing -the amount of vehemence or anger or righteousness that people can feel when they say, "She should be shot. She should be killed.' That's the thing that's most startling and disturbing, when you really sit down and think about it."
