- Hi, I'm Tom Hardy.
- And I'm Andy Serkis.
And we are doing the Wired Autocomplete Interview.
[upbeat music plays]
- You really answered those super thoroughly
and really fast.
- Well I...
- You have to turn it around
and feature it to the camera.
[upbeat music plays]
- What is Tom Hardy doing now?
- Currently, I'm working.
If the question is what am I working on right now?
Currently I'm doing a film with Gareth Evans
for Netflix which is a kinda police thriller,
bitty, uber violent movie.
- Yeah, but what are you doing like right now?
[laughing]
What is Tom Hardy's accent?
- Mellifluous, I'd say at best.
It's a collage of places, people, things, feelings,
it's irrelevant.
If you understand me, that's all that matters.
You know what I mean?
It's a hybrid of wish fulfillment and shame.
I think I'm bourgeois, middle-class, posh middle-class twat,
really.
[laughing]
And I affect it with all kinds of interesting variants
in order to make myself seem interesting,
moving on.
- Moving on.
What is Tom Hardy like in real life?
- That's a really good question.
- Do you know that?
- I've never ever come across myself.
I imagine he's a bit of a knob,
but honest and honest as the day is long.
- I know that to be absolutely true.
- Hardworking.
- Very, always.
- Diligent.
- Yup.
- Late.
- Often.
But not always.
- I'm happy, I think.
- Good.
- And grateful, very grateful to be alive
and to be privileged and to be sat alongside you,
- Aww.
- and here with you and you.
- What is Tom Hardy's favorite martial art?
Oh God. Anyway.
[Andy yawns]
- I love Brazilian jujitsu.
- Let me know when you finish.
- I just want to, yeah finish, and I just want to go
and roll and get all sweaty in spandex.
- With anyone in particular or?
- With everyone.
- With everyone?
- Everyone, yeah.
- Such a lovely sport.
- Can you demonstrate some jujitsu right now?
- No, it's not possible,
It's impossible to do it alone.
- Show me a grip.
- This is important as you grip it,
you have to put the knuckles on, there you go.
- Oh really, that's actually quite an expensive sweater.
- There you go.
It doesn't suit you though.
[laughing]
- Okay.
- Okay, so how did Andy Serkis,
rip off from this side, get into acting?
- How'd I get in?
Cause they let me in, actually on my first day of acting,
I went, I got my equity card,
which of course you needed in those days to get
into a theater and I was told that I couldn't enter
unless I had it in my hand,
so they didn't let me into the rehearsal room
and then it was a joke and I felt really embarrassed.
- So you didn't have to have an equity card.
- No, it was a joke.
- How did Andy Serkis get cast as Gollum?
- So I was asked to audition
for a film called Lord of the rings
that was being made down in New Zealand
and I said, surely, they wanted a voice
for a digital character, and I said, surely,
there must be like some really good roles in that movie,
why do you want me to do a voice for a digital character?
And then they said, no, he's Gollum,
and so I said, okay.
So I based it on, I thought, how am I going to do,
how am I going to do it?
I'm going to get into,
I going to basically impersonate my cat.
So I impersonate my cat coughing up furballs
and I went [imitates cat noises]
and that became Gollum.
- Whoa.
Ah, that's cool.
Okay, so how did Andy circus play King Kong?
How'd you play King Kong?
- I played him on set with Naomi Watts,
in a gorilla muscle suit.
And I was on top...
- Do you still have the that?
- I do still have the gorilla muscle suit at home.
And I was on top of,
I was on top of cherry pickers and cranes,
and all sorts of adjustable in height,
ladders so that we could be in close proximity
to each other, or I could be at the right height,
and then I had a thing called Kongolizer,
which was a thing which then projected my voice
through these big speakers,
so I could sound like a big gorilla.
And then when all of that was finished,
when we did the on-set stuff,
and we shot all of the Naomi side of things,
then I went onto the motion capture stage for two months
and did all of Kong's movements.
So, it was a complex affair.
- It's kind of blowing my mind,
I need to work with you on that kind of stuff.
Okay, so how did Andy Serkis prepare for Venom 2?
- There was nothing that could prepare me for Venom 2.
- Does Tom Hardy speak French?
- Not really, I speak really bad French.
I can understand...no, it's possible.
I do understand it enough to know what,
what you're saying.
- But why would that question be asked?
- Because I may have said that I speak French,
like I speak, say I ride horses and I can ski proficiently
and all kinds of things to get work,
none of it is true.
- Does Tom Hardy...
- Even though I am honest.
- sing?
- I don't sing, no.
- You do.
- I do not.
- You sing in this movie.
- That's true, but I'm being paid.
But its not something that I bring.
It's not something that I,
I feel the need to express myself through the medium of.
- Do you, is it, but do you,
so you don't sing in the shower.
You don't sing around the house
when you're making sourdough bread.
- Sometimes I sing,
I sing to the babies when they were babies,
just so they get to know my voice and I could hear my,
you know, when they're a baby.
But now my, Jordan say, daddy don't sing
because it rains when you sing.
[laughing]
So, move on please, its emotional.
- Does Tom Hardy support Tottenham?
- I did a documentary about Tottenham Hotspur,
but I'm afraid that if I had to support a team,
I think I'd fall into the category where I grew up
and what team was the closest to me,
and that would be Brentford.
- Does Tom Hardy...
Like dogs, I mean what kind of question...
- Yeah, I love dogs, of course I like dogs.
Yes, 100%.
- As much as, if not more than humans.
- I think it's my gateway to liking human beings, yes,
or understanding at least.
- Okay, yeah.
- Yeah, but each to their own right?
- A gateway drug to humans?
- A gateway of understanding and caring, yeah.
- That's amazing.
- Of compassion, yeah.
- Well, I believe it.
- It's less complicated in that aspect.
Whereas, you know, human beings are not.
[laughing]
- Next.
- Does Andy Serkis sing?
- No, not really, no.
- Not in the shower, as you asked me?
- No, no, how dull was that question?
- No, it wasn't dull.
- I mean, I wouldn't say like my wife Lorraine sings
all day long.
She's just like, you know,
the house is full of song all day long.
So I actually, I don't get even a word in edgewise
to sing, should I even want it.
- Well maybe it's a touchy subject then.
Does Andy Serkis have one arm in real life?
- I don't understand that question.
But I guess that's related to Black Panther
where I played Ulysses claw who lost an arm.
But I wouldn't say I would method in the sense
that I was prepared to chop my arm off.
- Did you have a green sock?
- I had a green sock cause the arm had to then unpeel,
if you like it, so I had a sort
of plastic, rubber prosthetic arm over the top,
which then had lines on it,
which then unpeeled to become the sonic weapon.
But yes, no.
- Does Andy Serkis have kids?
Does Andy Serkis have kids?
Does you have kids?
- I does, I does.
I have three kids, Ruby, Sonny and Louie.
My daughter's 23, my son's 21, Sonny and Louise 17.
All of whom have entered
into the profession as young thespians.
- Fantastic, they all got their equity cards.
Does Andy Serkis play a Hobbit
in Return Of the...
King?
- Well, I mean, not strictly speaking,
although of course Gollum was a Stoor Hobbit.
So yes, I suppose you could say, he was in,
before he became emaciated and overpowered by the ring.
He is a hobbit, so yes.
In that way, when he's Smeagol.
Before he gets transformed into Gollum,
he is a Stoor hobbit.
Stoor hobbits were river hobbits and they lived by the
river Gladden.
- Does Andy circus ride...
motorbikes?
- No, I had a Kawasaki 125 when I was about 17,
but I came off it that many times.
It was just , it was just not gonna happen.
Yeah, no, I was constantly crashing,
and sliding, and trying to be Evel Knievel at the time.
You know what I mean?
- Oh, there's more boards?
Okay.
- There's four each.
- Oh Jesus, here we go.
What...
movie is Andy Serkis...
I'm going to go this way, right?
Directing next, what are you directing next?
- That's a good question.
I've got a whole bunch of movies
that are kind of in development,
but what actually comes up likely, likely to be Animal Farm.
I think is probably the next thing that I'm doing.
- George Orwell?
- George Orwell's Animal Farm.
That is actually currently in the early works
of being developed into a movie.
- What does Andy Serkis do for fun?
- What, that we can talk about here?
- Well, what do you feel comfortable talking about?
- Massively into climbing.
I'm a big, very passionate mountaineer.
I love being in the mountains,
adore being in the mountains, in fact, you know,
I was in the mountains last week.
- What did Andy Serkis play...
in Star Wars?
- People know that, so why is it?
- Because people Googled us
because they didn't recognize you, clearly.
My guess would be like, we looked,
we watched it, but we couldn't, it was so remarkable.
[indistinct]
- All right, if I say this, it might just give you a clue.
Have you felt it?
That was a line from star wars
in which I played Supreme Leader Snoke,
the character that no one knows where he came from,
where he's going to or what he is or whatever,
anything about him, because he's so mysterious,
including myself.
- What is Andy Serkis,
what is Andy Serkis' workout routine?
- Okay, I like cycling.
I like, as I said, climbing
and I do occasional, and I like walking,
I like walking actually, every day,
very fast around the Heath.
[laughing]
- Are you being investigated?
Okay, so what...
What inspires Andy Serkis?
That's hard.
- Tom Hardy.
- Oh.
- Majorly, Woody Harrelson, Naomie Harris,
Kandinsky, Francis Bacon,
Miles Davis, John Coltrane,
Nina Simone...
- They're beautiful inspirations, man.
I mean, me withstanding obviously like...
- How did Tom Hardy become an actor?
- Yeah, I think I was about 19, 20,
And it was when we were auditioning for drama schools
and I didn't get in.
I was like, no, I need to do that, it's FOMO.
There's nothing else I can do, nothing.
Its an unusual thing to have gotten into really,
to sort of invested everything on something
that was unlikely to work.
[laughing]
But there you go.
- How did Tom Hardy...
fight himself in Legend?
- Well, I didn't fight myself, actually,
I fought with Jacob Tomuri who's obviously
a good friend of mine and a brilliant stunt man.
And we'd been working since Fury Road together.
And we coupled that together with Justin Spencer
and a couple of days and it took us two days to shoot.
And it was really good fun actually.
And it was over Jakey's shoulder onto me
and then over Jakey's shoulder onto me
as he swapped from running to Reggie as well with me.
- Here we go, how did Tom Hardy train for Venom?
- I had two knee surgeries and sat around.
Didn't I?
Like, I had two meniscus surgeries.
- Just before, literally not long before shooting.
It was unbelievable, - Eight weeks.
- I don't know how you did that.
- I just had to do it,
and I tore the meniscus in the first Venom,
cause I wore boxing boots.
Cause it looked so cool, and I was like oh,
they look really good,
and I really think that would be great for the character
and they were in there, but they've got no cushion in them.
So you were running around on the concrete,
and just, I'm old enough to cause damage quick
and that was it,
and then the other meniscus went doing Jujitsu.
And then I couldn't get, if I bent down,
I couldn't stand up again, cause they were locked and stuff.
It was rubbish, so I had the operation.
It was really quick, think it was just a shave
on both, but it was, I had two back to back,
eight weeks before we started filming.
And then so that the fighting was a little bit...
- How did Tom Hardy do the Bane voice?
- That was actually a really cool choice that Chris made,
Chris Nolan.
Bane quintessentially is, Latin X.
In many, origin of a character and I am not.
So I looked at the,
the concept of Latin and found a character,
a gentleman called, a gentlemen,
a man called Bartley Gorman, who's a Romany gypsy.
The king of the gypsies, very common,
is a bare knuckle fighter and a boxer.
And he said when I get into a ring with a man,
and we want to wipe you off the face of the earth,
and he wants to kill me.
And I was like, oh, this is great.
And I was like, I showed Chris.
I said, Chris, we can either go down a sort of,
sort of Darth Vader kind of route and you know,
straight, you know, just neutral tone villain voice,
or we could try this.
And this I've been thinking of just in case we, you know,
we've got to consider the roots and origins of the Bane.
But we could get laughed out of the part of it,
it might be something that we regret,
but it's your choice ultimately.
He says, no I think we'll go with it.
And that was that, and we played with it
and made it a bit more fluid,
and now people love it.
[laughing]
- Is Andy Serkis actually, is Andy Serkis American?
- Well, it's a little known secret that I'm not, no.
[laughing]
- Is Andy Serkis in Venom?
Be honest, be honest.
- Okay, okay,
no.
Actually, do you know what,
there is a moment where,
do you remember at the breakfast table,
where venom is tapping Eddie Brock on the shoulder.
- Yes.
- And you said, can you be the tendril of venom?
- Yes, yes.
- So I kind of am, I kind of am in the movie.
- You are, cheer up buddy.
- Cheer up buddy.
- Is Andy circus in Game of Thrones?
- Look, anybody who watches Game of Thrones
will clearly know that I'm not in it.
- But are you in it?
- Well, I'm invested in it, but definitely not in it.
- Is Andy Serkis married?
- Very definitely, yes.
- I can answer that, yeah.
- Yes, I've been together with Lorraine for 30 years now.
30 long, very happy,
we've never argued once, years, and we have three children,
Ruby, Sonny, and Louie, and yeah.
Yeah, we sort of still rub along together.
Things are all right, you know, hanging in there.
[laughing]
Well, this is going to be, this is dangerous now.
This is getting into dangerous territory.
Did Tom Hardy...
actually eat a live lobster?
- Several, yeah.
- Wow, really?
Did you actually...
- I think it's only fair, isn't it.
Like once I did one in the tank,
that I finished the rest of them off
because they witnessed and they are higher beings as well,
because they, well, I didn't eat any of them,
it's a higher sentient being apparently
because it lives off shit.
And it eats, it's a bottom feeder,
and it can subsist on,
on what people don't need.
You know what I mean, the lobster?
- That's very interesting.
Were there not rules in the union against lobsters?
- There's no union for lobsters.
- Really?
Did Tom Hardy ad lib Peaky Blinders?
- Ad lib in Peaky Blinders?
- I guess.
- Well, I can be honest.
Steve Knight is such an awesome writer of dialogue.
There is no reason to ad lib in Peaky Blinders at all.
And he always gives me a good 10 page scene
whenever I turn up a day.
So, I can't lie.
I do ad lib as well.
I like to go off that.
- ..on our stage, I've noticed.
- I do like to ad lib, yeah, but based off a solid script.
Try to get all of Steve Knight's work in there
because that's what should be in there.
And it's awesome, but it's just so good,
I just like to go off.
What's next?
- Next is, did Tom Hardy actually fly a plane in Dunkirk?
- Like, like Douglas Bader kind of like old school,
or in the film?
- In the film.
- Cause I wasn't, on the day,
I didn't actually fly a plane back in it,
in the second World War.
- Oh, you didn't.
- No.
- But in the film?
- In the film,
I didn't actually fly a plane in the film either.
But everything that I shot,
was shot in a sort of cockpit seat,
hanging over a cliff.
- That's amazing.
- So you could see the scene in the background.
- Did Tom Hardy...
voice Bane in South Park?
- No I didn't, no I didn't.
But I'm glad that somebody did, if they did,
did they? Have they?
- They must've done.
- That's awesome.
- That's cool, isn't it.
It's quite good to have your character immortalized
in such a fine piece of animation.
- And I'm reminded that I'm just a collage and fragment
of insecurities and neurosis.
- But we've established that you are deeply honest,
so that's sort of the root of everything,
that's important.
- Yeah, that's true, and you like to climb mountains.
- Exactly, exactly.
Nothing profound in that.
- It's been a pleasure.
- Completely.
- Thank you for watching.
- Goodbye.
[upbeat music ends]