Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy famously “went at it” while they were filming Mad Max: Fury Road – and they, along with the rest of the cast, are dishing the deets on the “tension” between the two.
2015’s post-apocalyptic action film Mad Max: Fury Road won an Oscar – but the road to the success of the films was filled with a lot of on-set drama.
Five years since the films was released, The New York Times published an article of an oral history on the making of the movie, where the cast – including Charlize, Tom, Zoe Kravitz and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley – reunited and got candid on the goings-on behind the scenes.
“Like anything that has some worth to it, it comes with complicated feelings,” Charlize shared. “I feel a mixture of extreme joy that we achieved what we did, and I also get a little bit of a hole in my stomach. There’s a level of ‘the body remembers’ trauma related to the shooting of this film that’s still there for me.”
Charlize and Tom have been open in the past about not getting along while filming the summer blockbuster. Rosie shared some insight about how the differences between two actors’ approach to working with director George Millier may have clashed.
“There was a lot of tension, and a lot of different personalities and clashes at times,” Rosie recalls. “It was definitely interesting to sit in a truck for four months with Tom and Charlize, who have completely different approaches to their craft.”
The two actors also discussed their experiences while filming.
“All of those young girls kind of turned to me as someone who would problem-solve for them, and this is not anybody’s fault — I only say this now because I know George and I’ve experienced this with George, so I’d fully trust him,” Charlize explains. “But I’ve also trusted directors fully when I didn’t comprehend what they were trying to do, and it just turned into a mess.”
“Because of how much detail we were having to process and how little control one had in each new situation, and how fast the takes were — tiny snippets of story moments were needed to make the final cut work — we moved fast, and it was at times overwhelming,” Tom shares. “One had to trust that the bigger picture was being held together.”
According to Zoe, Tom was pretty vocal about his concerns on set.
“Tom really had moments of frustration, of anger,” she says. “Charlize did, too, but I feel like he’s the one who really took it out on George the most, and that was a bummer to see. But you know, in some ways, you also can’t blame him, because a lot was being asked of these actors and there were a lot of unanswered questions.”
On hindsight, Charlize reflects that she could have been more understanding of the pressure Tom was going through.
“In retrospect, I didn’t have enough empathy to really, truly understand what he must have felt like to step into Mel Gibson’s shoes,” she says, referring to Tom playing Max in the film – the character originally played by Mel Gibson. “That is frightening! And I think because of my own fear, we were putting up walls to protect ourselves instead of saying to each other, ‘This is scary for you, and it’s scary for me, too. Let’s be nice to each other.’ In a weird way, we were functioning like our characters: Everything was about survival.”
Tom also contemplated on how he could have been a better co-star.
“I think in hindsight, I was in over my head in many ways,” he admits. “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.”
But he does acknowledge that Charlize did an awesome job pulling off her character, Furiosa.
“Charlize arguably laid down the finest lead character in an action movie, and that credit is much deserved, in my opinion; both to her as a phenomenal talent and also to George for recognizing from the very start that it was time to pass Mel’s shoes onto Furiosa,” he expressed.
Charlize had previously opened up in a 2015 interview Esquire about clashing with Tom, but she respected him as an actor.
“I’d rather have that honesty working with someone than someone who fake-smiles through something — especially for actors, when your job is to go for the emotional truth,” she said at the time. “When you’re with somebody and you don’t feel like you’re in their emotional truth, then you don’t trust them. I think good actors go all the way. If you want to be a safe actor, and you emotionally protect yourself from things getting out of hand, the performance will show all of that.”
