According to a book written by a member of the film crew, Charlize Theron said she ‘didn’t feel safe’ working with Tom Hardy on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road following a ‘aggressive’ confrontation.

The A-listers co-starred in the 2015 post-apocalyptic action picture, which got ten Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and won six. It was also regarded as one of the greatest films of the year, according to critical consensus.

Behind the scenes, though, things were not going so well. Throughout the lengthy shoot in the Namibian desert, the co-stars were known to have a tense relationship, but Kyle Buchanan’s new book Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road suggests Theron felt threatened enough to require on-set protection from the “aggressive” Hardy.

An extract from Kyle’s book focuses on an event that left Charlize “scared shitless,” prompting her to request that a female producer accompany her around until Mad Max was completed. It all started when Tom came three hours late on set one day, according to crew member Mark Goellnicht.

In the book, camera operator Mark Goellnicht says, “I remember vividly the day. 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.”

Hardy was known for “never being on time in the morning,” according to Goellnicht. “If the call time was in the morning, forget it — he didn’t show up.”

Some speculated that Hardy was deliberately arriving up late as a power move, knowing that it would enrage Theron.

“Eleven o’clock. She’s now in the War Rig, sitting there with her makeup on and a full costume for three hours. Tom turns up, and he walks casually across the desert,” Mark shared. “She jumps out of the War Rig, and she starts swearing her head off at him, saying, ‘Fine the fucking cunt a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he’s held up this crew,’ and ‘How disrespectful you are!’ She was right. Full rant.”

Hardy was ‘quite aggressive,’ he added, and Theron ‘felt really threatened.’

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‘That was the turning point, because then she said, “I want someone as protection”. She then had a producer that was assigned to be with her all the time,’ Goellnicht stated.

“It got to a place where it was kind of out of hand, and there was a sense that maybe sending a woman producer down could maybe equalize some of it, because I didn’t feel safe,” Charlize recalled.

“I don’t want to make excuses for bad behaviour, but it was a tough shoot. Now, I have a very clear perspective on what went down. I don’t think I had that clarity when we were making the movie. I was in survival mode; I was really scared shitless.”

“I don’t want to rehash things,” Theron said, “but it came out of a really bad moment where things kind of came to blows between me and Tom.” A woman producer called Denise Di Novi was dispatched to the film’s location in Namibia at Theron’s request.

“In hindsight, I was in over my head in many ways,” Hardy said in the book. “The pressure on both of us was overwhelming at times. What she needed was a better, perhaps more experienced partner in me. That’s something that can’t be faked. I’d like to think that now that I’m older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion.”

Tom Hardy played Bane in The Dark Knight Rises in 2017 (Image: GETTY)

Charlize first discussed her feud with Tom in depth in comments to the New York Times two years ago. “In retrospect, I didn’t have enough empathy to really, truly understand what he must have felt like to step into Mel Gibson’s shoes,” Charlize told the newspaper, referring to how Tom stepped into the Mad Max role that Mel had invented in previous chapters of the franchise.

“That is frightening!” she said. “And I think because of my own fear, we were putting up walls to protect ourselves instead of saying to each other, ‘This is scary for you, and it’s scary for me, too. Let’s be nice to each other.’ In a weird way, we were functioning like our characters: Everything was about survival.”

Buchanan’s book also goes into depth about Hardy’s intense method acting, which included allegedly spitting at Armie Hammer during their audition for the role of Max.

The picture was a box office success upon its initial release, winning six Academy Awards.