Charlize Theron 'didn't feel safe' amid Tom Hardy's fight
While reflecting on the difficult experience of filming Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy opened up about the tumultuous turn their working relationship took along the way.
“They were like two fathers in the front of the car. We were either fighting or we were freezing each other, I don't know which is worse, and they had to deal with it from behind. It was horrible!" Theron, 46, who played Imperator Furiosa, explains in the book. “We shouldn't have done that; we should have been better. I can recognize that."
According to the camera operator Mark Goellnicht, an alleged discussion between the two drivers occurred when the Atomic Blonde actress confronted Hardy, 44, for arriving on set three hours late.
"She was right. Full diatribe. She yells it. It's so loud, it's so windy, he may have heard some of it, but he charged at her and said, 'What did you tell me?'” Goellnicht claimed. “He was quite aggressive. She really felt threatened, and that was the turning point.”
The South African native noted that she asked Fury Road producer Denise Di Novi to help prevent further problems that day, saying: "It got to a place where it was a little bit out of control, and there was a feeling that maybe sending a female producer might equal some of that, because I don't feel safe."
Theron explained that director Jorge Miller supported her request after listening to concerns, adding, “I kind of put my foot down. George then said, 'Okay, well, if Denise comes…' I was open to that and that kind of took my breath away, because I felt like another woman would understand what I was up against."
Hardy, for her part, claimed that she was "over my head in a lot of ways" when she recalled her time on the project.
“The pressure on both of us was overwhelming at times. What she needed was a better partner, maybe more experienced in me," the Veneno star, who played Max Rockatansky in the critically acclaimed film, recalled. "I'd like to think that now that I'm older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion."
The pair previously addressed issues that stemmed from their fight with the vision of the Mad Max reboot.
“The biggest thing driving the entire production was fear. He was incredibly scared, because he had never done anything like that. I think the hardest thing between me and George is that he had the movie in his head and I was so desperate to understand it," Theron said. The New York Times in May 2020.
The Bombshell star expressed her desire to mentor her other cast members as a way to deal with the ups and downs of filming. However, the UK native chose to trust that the film would come out ahead in the end.
“Because of the amount of detail we had to process and how little control you had in each new situation, and how fast the shots were (you needed little bits of story moments to make the final cut work), we moved fast and it was overwhelming at times,” Hardy shared in 2020.
Blood, Sweat and Chrome: The Wild True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan went on sale Tuesday and is available for purchase anywhere books are sold.
