Charlize Theron reportedly felt “really threatened” by “aggressive” Tom Hardy during the shooting of Mad Max: Fury Road.
As co-stars and crew members of the action movie revealed in a new explosive book called Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild And True Story Of Mad Max: Fury Road., Hardy and Theron would often bump heads in the early stages of filming.
At one point, as an excerpt shared by Vanity Fair reveals, the actress got into a huge fight with Hardy after confronting him about coming on set several hours late.
According to camera operator Mark Goellnicht, Hardy would show up late for shootings despite producers specifically asking him to come on time.
Recalling the day the rift between Theron and Hardy widened, Goellnicht revealed how the actress was waiting in her costume for her co-star to show up for several hours.
“Gets to nine o’clock, still no Tom. ‘Charlize, do you want to get out of the War Rig and walk around, or do you want to…’ ‘No, I’m going to stay here.’ She was really going to make a point. She didn’t go to the bathroom, didn’t do anything. She just sat in the War Rig,” he said.
While the Venom star finally showed up at 11 am, Theron was far from ready to go on with the production without confronting Hardy about the delay first.
“She jumps out of the War Rig, and she starts swearing her head off at him, saying, ‘Fine the f**king c*** a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he’s held up this crew,’ and ‘How disrespectful you are!’” Goellnicht added.
“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?’”
According to the camera guy, Theron felt “really threatened” by her “quite aggressive” co-star at this point.
“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,” the excerpt reveals.
Weighing in on the rift between her and Hardy was also Theron who said:
“It got to a place where it was kind of out of hand, and there was a sense that maybe sending a woman producer down could maybe equalize some of it, because I didn’t feel safe.
“I kind of put my foot down. [Director] George [Miller] then said, ‘Okay, well, if Denise comes…’ He was open to it and that kind of made me breathe a little bit, because it felt like I would have another woman understanding what I was up against.”
Despite receiving “protection” from her co-star, Theron allegedly still felt rather “naked and alone” while shooting scenes with Hardy because her friend was forced to stay in the production office rather than join her on the set as per orders of producer Doug Mitchell.
Explaining the rift between the two lead actors was also screenwriter and Hardy’s friend Kelly Marcel who suggested the disagreements emerged during a “really intense, intense, intense period in an intense, intense place.”
“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,” she added while explaining how Theron is “very consistent in the way that she approaches a character” while Hardy is “very physical and all over the place and would try very different things.”
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