Nearly a decade ago, Charlie Hunnam made headlines when he dropped out of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie adaptation.

While many speculated that the reason was due to the film’s s**ual content and nudity, the Sons of Anarchy star recently revealed the real reason behind his departure.

Hunnam had signed on to play the lead role of Christian Grey opposite Dakota Johnson’s Anastasia Steele.

However, just before filming was scheduled to begin, Hunnam called director Sam Taylor-Johnson and informed her that he could not be part of the project.

Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t because of the nudity.

During the last season of Sons of Anarchy, Hunnam signed onto two film projects — Fifty Shades of Grey and Guillermo Del Toro’s gothic romance Crimson Peak.

However, the rehearsal and filming schedules of both films overlapped with shooting Sons of Anarchy, making it impossible for him to do all three at once.

In addition to the scheduling conflict, Hunnam was dealing with some personal issues, which left him emotionally and mentally overwhelmed.

Despite this, he decided to honor his commitment to Del Toro, who is a good friend of his, because he had given him his word.

Unfortunately, this meant breaking the bad news to Taylor-Johnson.

“It was deeply unpleasant and challenging emotionally.

I really, really pride myself on being a professional and a man of keeping my word.

It means a lot to me, truly,” Hunnam explained in an interview with Variety.

He called Taylor-Johnson directly to deliver the news and revealed that they both cried their eyes out for 20 minutes.

Hunnam further confessed that there was a lot of personal stuff going on in his life at the time, which left him on real emotional shaky ground and mentally weak.

When rumors began swirling that Hunnam had dropped out of the film because of its s**ual content, he was quick to dismiss them.

He pointed to his early work on the UK version of Queer as Folk that aired in the late 1990s as proof that he had no problems with n^dty and s**ual content.

“When I was 18 I was getting fed in the a**, completely n^ked on national TV, you know?” he said.

Hunnam added that fans could have seen even more of him on that show if it weren’t for the censors.

“I did full frontal when I was 18 on the TV show Queer as Folk.

But because I was playing a 15-year-old character, the censorship people wouldn’t allow us to put it on TV,” he revealed to Entertainment Tonight.

Despite doing mostly shirtless scenes nowadays, Hunnam claims that the level of n^dty he does doesn’t bother him at all.

While he might have been “a little more fearless” about n^dty during his younger years, he has nothing to hide and would do full-frontal again if asked to.

Hunnam has never had the desire to be known as a s** symbol or “the guy” who takes his shirt off onscreen.

“n^dty doesn’t bother me, but being reduced to a pinup boy is a bit annoying.

I can empathize with female stars — how much stress is put on them to be s**y and on their looks as opposed to their acting,” he explained to Cosmo.

For those who want to see more of Hunnam’s early work, all seven seasons of Sons of Anarchy are available on Hulu.

Queer as Folk UK can be found on Peacock, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.