Tom Hardy clears the air about MobLand’s on set ‘drama’

Turns out, the only drama happening on the MobLand set takes place in front of the camera, Tom Hardy says.

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After a spat with writer Jez Butterworth and producer David Glasser earlier this year, Hardy had been rumoured to have been fired ahead of the release of Season 2 of the Paramount+ crime drama.

“He refused to come out of his trailer for hours at a time,” a source told The Hollywood Reporter about Hardy’s alleged on-set behaviour, adding that the actor “kept the cast waiting” and characterizing it as “a power play.”

As news of the alleged tension made the rounds in May, Hardy’s co-star Helen Mirren defended him on Instagram, posting a photo of the actor and writing, “Love you now and always.”

Hardy’s other castmate, Pierce Brosnan, said rumours of a feud were “a storm in a teacup.”

Speaking to Postmedia over Zoom from London alongside his TV wife Joanne Froggatt, Hardy insists that he and his co-stars on the series, which also includes Toby Jones, Paddy Considine, Lara Pulver, Anson Boon and Mandeep Dhillon, get on like one big dysfunctional family.
“If this was a football pitch, it would be a great pitch to play on,” Hardy, 49, says. “It’s a really good game to play in.”

Produced by Guy Ritchie, MobLand stars Hardy as Harry Da Souza, a faithful fixer for the Harrigan crime family, which is led by powerful patriarch Conrad (Brosnan) and his devious wife, Maeve (Mirren).

Froggatt, who gained worldwide fame playing Anna Bates on Downton Abbey, says she “always wanted to act in the gangster genre.”

“Ever since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, I’ve wanted to work with Guy Ritchie. For this to come my way, I was so excited. It was such a bucket list kind of job for me,” Froggatt, 46, says.

Season 1 ended with the Harrigans in prison, but in this week’s Season 2 première they’re no longer behind bars, as they seek to expand their crime empire across London.

Ahead of last year’s Season 1 première, Hardy described the series as “Dickensian” and “kind of like Game of Thrones, too.”

Now that he’s had more time to be amongst Brosnan and Mirren and the vicious world of the Harrigans, Hardy has some more shows he thinks MobLand resembles.

“I think it’s got a bit of The Addams Family in there as well, and The Munsters. There’s a bit of an old ‘80s horror vibe to it —and it’s comedy,” he says.

Hardy also heaped praise on Butterworth, calling him a “really confident” writer.

“It’s a versatile piece that contains both tragedy and comedy and naturalism,” he says.

Hardy’s decision to join MobLand came after spending seven years playing Eddie Bock in Marvel’s Venom franchise.

He’s played dozens of characters, earning an Oscar nod for his part opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant and booking memorable roles as Max Rockatansky in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road and Alfie Solomons on another British gangland drama Peaky Blinders.
But Hardy says there’s no design to his career and the roles he plays.

“I don’t have control over what options come my way. I just get excited by things,” he says. “I got excited by Venom and I spent seven years doing that and I really enjoyed it. But then the end of the road came, and MobLand appeared, and I got excited to act in that. It’s quite simple in that aspect.”

A quarter-century after his film debut in Black Hawk Down, Hardy likes that he has been able to evolve as an actor. Acting was a career he gravitated toward after he “latched onto that feeling of belonging.”

He hasn’t lost that feeling, likening his MobLand castmates to a soccer team. “For me, training and playing with these guys and this talent is going to rub off on me, hopefully, as a performer,” he says.

And the passage of time has made him grateful.

“I don’t think a 25-year-old version of me would’ve had the wherewithal to sit comfortably and acknowledge the harvest and abundance that’s available in the narrative that we’ve been gifted with MobLand,” he says.

Season 2 of MobLand is now streaming on Paramount+.

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