Tom Hardy on playing the ultimate anti-hero in… | Little White Lies

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Tom Hardy on play­ing the ulti­mate anti-hero in Taboo

29 Dec 2016

Words by Adam Woodward

A person wearing a black coat and top hat, standing in a dimly lit room with candles in the background.
A person wearing a black coat and top hat, standing in a dimly lit room with candles in the background.
The actor reveals details of his upcom­ing BBC dra­ma – your new TV obsession.

From Bron­son to Law­less to Mad Max, Tom Hardy has played some of the most com­plex and thrilling char­ac­ters in recent cin­e­ma his­to­ry. Now he’s tak­ing his dis­tinct brand of unhinged anti-hero to the small screen with the upcom­ing BBC mini-series Taboo. We recent­ly caught an ear­ly glimpse of the pilot episode and, well, let’s just say it’s a show unlike any­thing you’ve seen before.

Hardy dreamed up the dan­ger­ous­ly charis­mat­ic, mys­te­ri­ous lead, James Delaney, with his dad, Chips, almost a decade ago. Oth­er projects soon took prece­dence as Hardy hit the big time, but the pair nev­er lost sight of their pas­sion project, even­tu­al­ly bring­ing in Rid­ley Scott as pro­duc­er and Steven Knight to help flesh out the script. Here Hardy speaks about rel­ish­ing his most men­ac­ing, sophis­ti­cat­ed char­ac­ter to date.

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“Back in 2007 I played Bill Sikes in Oliv­er Twist and real­ly enjoyed the char­ac­ter. I thought I’d real­ly like to play Bill Sikes as a lead and I’d also real­ly like to play Dr Faus­tus in Bill Sikes’ body. I also real­ly want to play Han­ni­bal Lecter and Sher­lock Holmes and Philip Mar­lowe and maybe a lit­tle bit of Mr Dar­cy but not too much because that’s real­ly bor­ing actu­al­ly. I want­ed James Delaney to be like a clas­si­cal hero­ic duke, a man of action, but some­one who also has a depth of deprav­i­ty to him and this great abil­i­ty to say ​‘fuck off’.

“The prob­lem with many leads is that they’re quite bor­ing because they just fol­low a direct line, they do stuff and they just hap­pen to be in the room. This is why the anti-hero is quite inter­est­ing because this guy has got some real char­ac­ter to him. The inter­est­ing thing about James is that he’s a direct reflec­tion of the sum of his world in the ear­ly 1800s. There’s a mythol­o­gy to Delaney, it’s a very sol­id fer­tile play­ground for us.”

Serene woodland scene with person wading in still, misty pond surrounded by lush, green trees.

“Life is a rel­a­tive shit sand­wich, but there’s beau­ty in it. There’s lies and there’s deceit and there’s hon­esty. What we’re look­ing at in Taboo is: what is hon­esty and what is kind­ness? What is cru­el­ty? Who’s right, who’s wrong? The diverse nature of the human con­di­tion can be grey and very con­fus­ing. At the same time, there’s sen­su­al­i­ty and love and com­pas­sion. But not a lot has changed when it comes to pow­er, whether it’s the Vikings or the Romans, noth­ing has real­ly changed in that aspect. That’s where James Delaney comes in.

“To find a group of peo­ple who want to change, that’s very inter­est­ing in this peri­od. What kind of peo­ple are they? They’re not gang­sters. There’s lots of unhap­py peo­ple and a lot of dis­place­ment and a lot of fear around and that’s not sim­i­lar to what’s crack­ing on today. For us that pre­sent­ed a very cre­ative place to explore. Because who’s to say that his­to­ry is absolute­ly correct?”

Sea­son 1 of Taboo airs on BBC One on 10 January.

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