Arriving late and making Helen Mirren wait: Has Tom Hardy been fired from MobLand? | television

IIf you’re familiar with the Paramount+ MobLand series, these past few days will be an absolute revelation. Finally, when everyone thought it would never be possible, something exciting happened. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen on screen.

Instead, rumors are circulating that Tom Hardy has been fired. About a week ago, Book reported that Hardy left the set of MobLand after clashing with the cast and crew. As it stands, it’s been pushed back a bit – partly because Paramount never greenlit a third series – but the takeaway remains the same: Tom Hardy looks like an absolute nightmare to work with.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, his behavior on MobLand included a greater insistence on creative control – handing script notes to producer Jez Butterworth and creator Ronan Bennett – while generally arriving late and locking himself in his trailer for hours on end. “He kept the actors waiting, [which is] “Power play. Keeping Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and others waiting is career suicide, I’d bet,” a source told the outlet. And it appears that’s a bet the source lost, given that Mirren posted a photo of Hardy’s face on Instagram last night, captioning it, “Love you now and always.”

It’s also a bold claim, as Hardy’s entire reputation at this point revolves around being difficult on set. The most famous example came during the filming of Mad Max: Fury Road, which featured clashes between Hardy and his co-star Charlize Theron. Different theories abound as to what happened — some reports that Theron was fed up with Hardy’s late arrival, others that he insisted on justifying every bit of action and dialogue — but it clearly led to a confrontation where “things kind of collided,” according to Theron.

There are others. In his recent memoir, “Make It So,” Patrick Stewart lamented his terrible time on the 2002 film Star Trek: Nemesis, writing that “the actor who played the movie’s villain, Shinzon, was a strange, isolated young man from London. His name was Tom Hardy… Tom didn’t interact with any of us on a social level. He never said ‘good morning,’ never ‘good evening,’ and spent the hours when he wasn’t needed.” In his trailer with his girlfriend.

While filming Lawless in 2012, he got into a fight with Shia LaBeouf, which, according to the film’s director, “escalated to the point where they both had to be restrained.” This has been a bit disputed, as it has been watered down in accounts of them falling down some stairs during a playful wrestle. During the making of The Revenant, after he got into a fight with the director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Hardy made T-shirts for the cast and crew from a photo showing him with Iñárritu in a headlock. Whether the fight was real or not — Hardy says no — Iñárritu still sees fit to describe the actor as a “beautiful human being.”

All of this is to say that you don’t hire Tom Hardy for a project if you’re determined it should go smoothly. Hardy’s career is full of strange oddities, from the voice he decided to give Bane to his incessant snoring during the movie Taboo. You could argue that even signing up for MobLand — a largely mediocre TV series on everyone’s least favorite streaming service — at the height of its stardom is a largely eccentric choice.

You also need to take into account the fact that Hardy is, by a certain distance, the best thing in MobLand. As the fixer (Harry Da Souza) at the center of the show, Hardy provides the series with charm and forward momentum. Without him, viewers would have nothing to chew on, except for the inexplicable way that Pierce Brosnan can speak the worst Irish accent ever and simultaneously be literally from Ireland.

The options now available to MobLand producers are limited and painful. Assuming the show will be rebooted (which seems like a no-brainer considering it was the biggest launch in Paramount+ history), MobLand will have to toy with the idea of ​​letting Hardy go and recalibrate without him. This would be easy to do, because no one should be safe in mob drama, but it is not recommended. He’s currently the show’s center of gravity, and without him it risks drifting into nothingness.

The show clearly knows that. Production insiders now claim that Hardy has not been fired, and that “things are being worked on creatively.” According to them, “He’s a tough guy, but he’s a movie star” – and he’s not the only one at fault. How they managed to make a TV show with an openly hostile group is a big question – it certainly wouldn’t be fun to produce at all. But in return, the show will retain the only good thing it has; A magnetic performance by a capable conductor. Maybe the only thing MobLand can do at this point is suck it up and bear it.