Tom Hardy Does Television

Tom Hardy recently sat down for an interview with Vulture ahead of the premiere of his FX tv series Taboo, which premieres tonight. Here's what he had to say:

Matt Zoller Seitz: Why did you decide to do TV? It’s not like you lack feature-film opportunities.

Tom Hardy: I wanted to do my own stuff, and I also wanted to work in a medium where I could have more time to tell a story. And I wanted to work with my dad and Steve Knight. This is my father’s story and Steve Knight’s story, and I’d loved working with Steve on Locke and Peaky Blinders. Also I wanted to work at home, on the BBC — come home, you know? I know I sound really silly, but I started out on the BBC and wanted to put back in to where I’m from. I came up with the character [of James Delaney] and then Chips came up with the story.

MZS: So Delaney started out as a character without a story?

TH: Well, I worked on Oliver Twist [on the BBC in 2007] playing Bill Sikes, and I really enjoyed it.

MZS: That’s funny — with Delaney’s top hat and his walk and those 1820s-London sets, my first thought was, This is a Charles Dickens novel with a Clint Eastwood character at the center.

TH: Yes! And there’s a bit of Sam Peckinpah in the vibe as well. The thing definitely started to turn into a Western by the latter part of filming. On the page, there was also a bit of Marlow from Heart of Darkness, and a bit of Hannibal Lecter, Oedipus, Heathcliff, Sherlock Holmes, Robert De Niro in The Mission, and Klaus Kinski in Aguirre: The Wrath of God. A lot of different classical characters amalgamated into one. My father was like, “Tom, that’s an awful lot of people to put into it.”

MZS: Your Taboo character is described on the show as an “adventurer of very poor repute … defined by stories of madness, savagery, theft, and worse.” While in the service, he broke the necks of officers and set a boat on fire. And there’s some things in his past involving the slave trade that are so horrendous that the first three episodes of the show can barely bring themselves to allude to them. 

TH: There’s a line of Delaney’s: “I do know the evil that you do because I was once part of it.” It’s the concept of taking somebody to the brink of numbness from participating in purely heinous acts. That is something he can never, ever, wash away. He cannot wash away his accountability and responsibility.

MZS: You’re talking about the dominant culture in England at that time?


TH: The dominant culture at every time, everywhere. He who hath the biggest hands eats the most.  

Read the full interview at Vulture.