New details in Mad Max co-stars Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy’s infamous feud: ‘Had to be coaxed’

New details have come to light after it emerged that Mad Max co-stars Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy weren’t exactly friends on set.

Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy.

Charlize Theron has openly spoken about how much trouble she had filming Mad Max: Fury Road with her lead co-star, Tom Hardy.

But director George Miller recently revealed just what may have caused their rumoured feud while filming in the Namibia desert.

Speaking to the UK’s Telegraph, Miller initially chalked it up to their creative differences, noting, “They were just two very different performers.”

But he revealed, “Tom has a damage to him but also a brilliance that comes with it, and whatever was going on with him at the time, he had to be coaxed out of his trailer. Whereas Charlize was incredibly disciplined – a dancer by training, which told in the precision of her performance – and always the first one on set.”

Miller compared their differences to the on-screen tension between their characters, who became reluctant allies in the 2015 post-apocalyptic feature.

“I’m an optimist, so I saw their behaviour as mirroring their characters, where they had to learn to co-operate in order to ensure mutual survival,” Miller said. “There’s no excuse for it, and I think there’s a tendency in this business to use great performances as an excuse for other disruption that could be avoided.”

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road.

As Variety reports, Theron admitted in the Mad Max: Fury Road oral history Blood, Sweat, & Chrome that she has since come to regret how she and Hardy handled their conflict at the time.

She said it felt like they were “two parents in the front of the car. We were either fighting or we were icing each other — I don’t know which one is worse — and they had to deal with it in the back. It was horrible! We should not have done that; we should have been better. I can own up to that.”

In one instance detailed in the oral history, Hardy allegedly showed up to set three hours late while Theron waited in the War Rig in full costume and makeup.

“The call on set was eight o’clock. Charlize got there right at eight o’clock, sat in the War Rig, knowing that Tom’s never going to be there at eight even though they made a special request for him to be there on time,” camera operator Mark Goellnicht said. “He was notorious for never being on time in the morning. If the call time was in the morning, forget it — he didn’t show up.”

Theron later admitted they were regularly “fighting”. Picture: Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images

The film’s director claimed Hardy was regularly late on set. Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Miller later said in his interview that he warned Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth about the psychological toll filming may take on them. “You have to be obsessive about safety – physical safety, as the shoot goes on and fatigue sets in, but also psychological safety. It’s not like the wild old days,” he recalled telling them.

Taylor-Joy recently hinted at the difficult time she had filming the prequel film, in which she takes on Theron’s role as Furiosa.

“I’ve never been more alone than making that movie,” she recently told The New York Times. “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”

When the NYT pressed her for more details about what made the production so difficult, Taylor-Joy shut down the line of questioning and told the outlet, “Talk to me in 20 years.”

Furiosa premieres in theatres on May 24.

This article originally appeared in Decider and was reproduced with permission.