In Amazon's new series Hand of God - first season available September 4th in the U.S., UK, Austria, and Germany on Amazon Prime - Sons of Anarchy's Ron Perlman plays a morally corrupt judge who suffers a breakdown and believes that God is speaking directly to him, compelling him onto a path of vigilante justice.

Perlman, along with the show's cast and creators, answered questions from TV critics during the recent TCA Press Tour, touching on the arc of Season 1 and whether or not Perlman's character, Judge Pernell Harris, is insane or actually obeying commands from the Almighty."The answer could be multiple things," creator/executive producer Ben Watkins said. "I wanted to give fodder for both sides of it. And that puts the audience in the position where they have to draw the conclusions. And I'm really interested to see how that happens because then the answer is different for everyone, and it's really based on their beliefs, how they were brought up, and their agendas."

Hand of God: "Pilot" Review

Did Perlman himself even know the true mental state of his character? Or was it being kept a secret even from him? "I never knew at all where it was going to go," he explained. "And I was ambivalent as to whether I wanted to know or not. When you take on a sort of assignment like this, 90 percent of it is trust. And so the man who wrote that pilot, that's really kind of all I needed to know, that he was going to give me as much as information as he felt I needed, no more, no less.""And what he was giving me was so overwhelmingly engaging at every turn that the less I knew about what was coming down the road, the happier I was," Perlman continued. "And it was plenty for me to just immerse myself in moment to moment without becoming overly anxious about where the road was taking me."Perlman also spoke about his reasoning for choosing Hand of God as his follow up series to the immensely popular Sons of Anarchy. "There's no precedent for the kind of storytelling that Ben has captured and has shined a light on," he said. "And the fact that Amazon was able to meet that head‑on and celebrate the originality of it and how, you know, in‑your‑face and uncompromising it is with their own set of uncompromising kind of values and resources, this is the most exciting period I've ever seen in television. And it's probably the most exciting place to be if you're a storyteller, is television, because of that very factor. I mean, ten years from now, it will all get f***ed up, but, you know, for right now it's a beautiful place.""And it's the reason why," he added, "coming from another phenomenal little dream factory called FX, I was insistent on finding a way to continue ‑‑ seeing if it was possible whether lightning to strike twice. And at Amazon it's just been kind of a love affair that I hope lasts beyond today."Hand of God also stars Dana Delany, Andre Royo, Garret Dillahunt, and Alona Tal.The Hand of God pilot us currently free to watch for Prime members over on Amazon's Instant Video platform.

Additional reporting by Eric Goldman.Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/Showrenity