Tom Hardy, as you’ll know if you’ve seen Esquire’s current cover, is a man who scrubs up pretty well, so it’s no surprise that some style matters cropped up in the accompanying interview. Among the titbits that there weren’t quite room for in the profile of the actor, star of the imminent Venom: Let There Be Carnage, was his confirmation that the dark-sleeved Detroit Lions NFL varsity jacket worn by his human character, journalist Eddie Brock, in the new movie is a purposeful nod to the one worn by Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley in the later Beverly Hills Cop movies. (Let’s hope that Sony has its merch plan in place as there are already versions for sale on Etsy.)
Other revelations were perhaps more surprising: at one point in the interview Hardy and Esquire were joined by his long-time stuntman Jacob Tomuri, at which point Hardy revealed – to Tomuri’s chagrin – that Tomuri had to wear a specially constructed onesie under his suit when doubling as him on 2015 Kray twins movie Legend in order to replicate Hardy’s shoulder line. Tomuri, for his part, likes to point out that what he himself might lack in trapezius muscles, Hardy lacks in hams.
“Jacob fondly points out my legs are really skinny. I skipped leg day for about 43 years,” Hardy told Esquire, in an interview that took place in late June in Cardiff, where he and Tomuri are currently filming martial arts movie Havoc for Netflix. But as these exclusive extra comments reveal, Tomuri wasn’t done.
“I remember on The Revenant, what was it? Double leather pants?” he said, of Hardy’s turn as a desperate fur trapper alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Alejandro Iñarritu’s 2015 film, for which Hardy received a best supporting actor Oscar nomination (losing a tattoo-based bet to DiCaprio in the process which he has now made good on).
“Triple leather pants,” confirmed Hardy. “Just to make it look like I had legs. That’s the trick, that’s the illusion. How do I look like I’ve done squats? I’ll wear three pairs of tracksuit trousers under my leather suit.”
Ever the optimist (or is it sadist?), Hardy could see the upside in the situation: “The good thing about it is I know that Jakey has to make his legs as atrophied as mine if he works with me and I want to wear shorts, which,” he said with a grin, “I’m thinking of doing.”
Tomuri, ever the masochist, was equally cheerful in his response. “And I have to run up massive hills, hating you.”
