“I don’t fit into a box,” the actor Tom Hardy said. “It’s not a statement of childish immaturity; I don’t.”
It was easy to believe him. As stars go, Hardy is less containable than most. On a recent wintry afternoon at the Ritz-Carlton hotel overlooking Central Park, Hardy’s tattooed biceps only just lodged inside his tight black T-shirt and his legs spilt over the arm of the puffy gold chair where he sat sometimes spooning up chicken soup, sometimes sucking on an e-cigarette. His quick, confounding mind leapt from one association to another at turbocharged speed.
Best known for characters like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, John Fitzgerald in The Revenant, Bill Sikes and Heathcliff in the television adaptations of Oliver Twist and Wuthering Heights, and the title role in Mad Max: Fury Road, Hardy has a particular line on villains who might be heroes, heroes who might be villains and several masked men.
Now he’s originating a category-defying role of his own in Taboo, an adventure tale he put together with the producer and director Ridley Scott; the screenwriter Steven Knight; and his own father, the writer Chips Hardy.
Hardy plays James Keziah Delaney, a man long thought dead, who returns to England from Africa in 1814 with a sack of diamonds and a plan to exact revenge on the British East India Company.
Hardy spoke about his influences for the show; his beard; and why he won’t gallop on horseback. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You and your father began developing Taboo nine years ago?
I’d just played Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have a Bill Sikes who was well-spoken? Maybe he could be like Heathcliff. With a little bit of Hannibal Lecter, a little bit of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps also some Oedipus. And then maybe a little bit of Jack the Ripper. And imagine he was a restitution agent and ex-army and had come back and was now irredeemable in society. And my dad said, “Tom, this is an awful lot to put into one character,” and he sent me out of the room. About a year later, he came back to me with a treatment he’d written.
How does the East India Co. get involved?
Well, they were around at the time. We were looking for something that reflected global corporatisation — J.P. Morgan, Monsanto sort of territory. Some historians are quite upset that we tried to vilify a great establishment.
Tell me about James Delaney.
We wanted to kind of create a modern story, some new writing, which felt like it had come from a book that hadn’t been found 100 years ago and then see what we could do without any dragons or CGI. James Delaney is an explorer, a Machiavellian sort of type. He should run the gamut from heinous to noble. He’s gone so far through barbarousness and savagery that he’s come out the other end.
How did you prepare for the role?
I really think about acting in two different parts. There’s convincing and not convincing acting. Convincing acting is about hustle and the flow of narrative of what do I want and what am I going to do in order to get it, and the energy transition between two actors or more. And then there’s camouflage, the creation of silhouette and disguise, whether you use putty nose or whether you’re slightly subtler.
So what did you do for Delaney?
Nothing. I’d spent nine years talking about him. I did maybe 5 per cent acting on the show, most of it was running around, working with heads of department, marketing. I didn’t have time to do any acting. The hat helps and the scars.
And his really bad haircut.
In that time, people used to have their hair in a certain way that emulated the statues from the Roman days, the Greek days. His hair looks like a horse has chewed it. It just looks bad. So for me it’s defiance.
Did you learn to ride for Taboo?
My horse was called Rusty. Anybody could ride him. He’s brilliant. I learnt very minimal riding. Not galloping.
Really? You do so many of your own stunts.
I fell off a horse when I was a kid.
You have several shirtless scenes. Was it a trick to cover up your own tattoos?
It took about two hours. We had to cover over my tattoos and apply the Ashanti tattoos as well. We called it Naked Monday. I was getting naked in the Thames, walking around the Thames in various parks 30 miles from London, banking as many shots as we could possibly use for dream sequences and stuff like that. Not enough of it has made the final cut compared to how cold it was. January in London was cold.
This is in some ways a revenge story. Do you think of yourself as a vengeful person?
I don’t forget things. But no, not really. Nothing, thankfully, has ever happened to me which would cause me to exact or to wish to exact a revenge.
You have such a pretty face —
So do you.
Well, I’m not always on film hiding it behind a mask or under a hat.
I think as a youngster, when I started acting, there was a pressure to be or look a certain way — a six-pack, straight teeth, tan. That’s just not going to be a constant that I could ever maintain. I’m a bit wonky. Even if I had a pretty face, I couldn’t capitalise on that. That’s not where my heart is. I do like a beard as well. Not that my whole life comes down to beards and tattoos, but there is a certain level of yeah, I’ve got something you want, so I’m going to deface it. Or maybe I’m incredibly vulnerable, so if I look like this maybe you’ll leave me alone. Perhaps that, too.
Don’t miss it
Taboo is now streaming on Starz Play.
