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Both the actors, Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron are two opposite forces of nature with very distinct ways of shaping their craft, which made shooting Mad Max: Fury Road a very difficult task. The crew of the film recently sat together with Vanity Far and talked about the feud between Charlize Theon and Tom Hardy that threatened to burn down the whole film.
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley began by saying that working together with Tom and Charlize for four months in a truck was an "interesting" experience, seeing their varied "approaches to their craft."
"Tom is very physical and all over the place and would try very different things. Charlize is cerebral and very consistent in the way that she approaches a character," said Kelly Marcel. "They’re both powerhouses, but in their very different ways of working. Which, weirdly, is why the film works: It’s all pouring out on the screen."
To this, George Miller added that the story being a tale of "self-preservation" it was almost like a character killing another on-screen was almost a given without much thought to it. Acting on the same violent storyline for a while eventually made the actors feel along similar lines in real life. P.J. Voeteb, the first assistant of the director of Fury Road, revealed that the "animosity" between the actors could be seen right from the beginning of the production, even before the crew had started shooting.
In fact, Charlize Theron did agree that things were pretty bad between the actors. "We were either fighting or we were icing each other—I don’t know which one is worse—and they had to deal with it in the back. It was horrible! We should not have done that; we should have been better. I can own up to that."
The two distinguished personalities of the actors added to most of the bad blood between the two. The team described Tom as someone who is very "provocative" while Charlize was the opposite.
At this point, Charlize Theron explained that she was "scared shitless" and had filmed the picture in "survival mode." Though she admitted that she doesn't have any "excuses for bad behavior," she revealed that with time she realized why both the actors were on their worst behavior during the shoots.
"Because of my own fear, we were putting up walls to protect ourselves instead of saying to each other, “F--k, this is scary for you, and it’s scary for me, too. Let’s be nice to each other," the actress added. "We were functioning, in a weird way, like our characters: Everything was about survival."
Though the actress gave a hard time to people with her altered personality during the shoot time, the crew of the film shared that she is otherwise a very great person to deal with and never gave much trouble during the shoots.
"Charlize is the easiest person to deal with in terms of, Okay, we’re ready," said Samantha McGrady, an assistant on Fury Road. "Sometimes I would just call her and say, “We’re going to be ready in an hour,” and I knew she would always get in the car, get her makeup on, and get on set."
On the other hand, Tom was the exact opposite. "And when you’ve got someone like Tom who’s a larrikin and is late and very Method in his performances, just in sheer personality, there was always going to be a clash," explained Matt Taylor, the stunt driver on the film.
The promotion runner of the film also added that Tom would only come out of his trailer only for the shoots and sometimes would be late for that, too. Eventually, the veteran producer Denise Di Novi had to travel to Namibia to mediate the clash between Tom and Charlize.
"I remember the day vividly. The call on set was eight o’clock. Charlize got there right at eight o’clock, sat in the War Rig, knowing that Tom’s never going to be there at eight even though they made a special request for him to be there on time," recalled Mark Goellnicht. "He was notorious for never being on time in the morning. If the call time was in the morning, forget it—he didn’t show up."
"Whether that was some kind of power play or not, I don’t know, but it felt deliberately provocative. If you ask me, he kind of knew that it was really pissing Charlize off because she’s professional, and she turns up really early," Ricky Schaumburg continued the story.
To add to her misery, Charlize was also waiting to be let off work so that she could go back to her child and was just a new mom at the time.
Mark Goellnicht picked the narration. "Tom turns up, and he walks casually across the desert. She jumps out of the War Rig, and she starts swearing her head off at him, saying, “Fine the f---ing c--t a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he’s held up this crew,” and “How disrespectful you are!” She was right. Full rant. She screams it out. It’s so loud, it’s so windy—he might’ve heard some of it, but he charged up to her up and went, “What did you say to me?”
"He was quite aggressive, added Goeelnicht. "She really felt threatened, and that was the turning point, because then she said, “I want someone as protection.” She then had a producer that was assigned to be with her all the time."
"Looking back on where we are in the world now, given what happened between me and Tom, it would have been smart for us to bring a female producer in. You understand the needs of a director who wants to protect his set, but when push comes to shove, and things get out of hand, you have to be able to think about that in a bigger sense," said Charlize Theron.
"That’s where we could have done better if George trusted that nobody was going to come and f--k with his vision but was just going to come and help mediate situations," she added. "It was a little bit like walking on thin ice."
The two actors finally admitted that things could have been better; Credits: NY Post
Finally Tom Hardy admitted, "In hindsight, I was in over my head in many ways. The pressure on both of us was overwhelming at times. What she needed was a better, perhaps more experienced partner in me. That’s something that can’t be faked. I’d like to think that now that I’m older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion."
