It's no secret that Mad Max: Fury Road stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron didn't exactly see eye-to-eye while filming George Miller's action masterpiece, but some shocking new details have now come to light which suggest that things very nearly spiralled out of control.
In a new oral history book, Blood, Sweat & Chrome (via Vanity Fair), more information relating to their feud is revealed, and it seems one incident, in particular, resulted in a confrontation that caused a major shake-up in production.
“I remember vividly the day,” camera operator Mark Goellnicht said. “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. 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.”
First assistant camera Ricky Schamburg notes, “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.”
Hardy reportedly arrived on set three hours late, and Theron let him and everyone else know exactly how she felt about it.
“She jumps out of the War Rig, and she starts swearing her head off at him, saying, ‘Fine the f*cking c*nt a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he’s held up this crew,’ and ‘How disrespectful you are!'” Goellnicht recalls. “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. She really felt threatened, and that was the turning point.”
After this incident, Theron insisted that a female producer, Denise Di Novi, came to the set to "shadow her" because she "didn't feel safe."
Though both actors did press for the film together and seemed to reconcile (to some extent, at least), it sounds like things became very volatile, and these accounts to not paint Hardy in a very positive light whatsoever.