Tom Hardy covers the January issue of Esquire UK to promote his new “anti-Downton” miniseries, Taboo. That’s not me saying it’s “anti-Downton,” it’s Tom saying that. Taboo is set in 1814, and Tom stars as an adventurer who returns home to England to collect an inheritance, and shenanigans – dramatic shenanigans – ensue. As for this Esquire interview… because Taboo is his baby (he produced it and shepherded it for some-odd seven years), he’s chattier and nicer than ever before. He’s certainly nicer here than he ever was during the promotion for The Revenant almost one year ago exactly, when he was publicly called out by a journalist for being an unprofessional douche. You can read the full Esquire piece here. Some highlights:

He needs to get a new tattoo because he lost a bet: “I haven’t got it yet because it sucks.” Hardy had a wager with Leonardo DiCaprio, with whom he starred in last year’s The Revenant, a story of betrayal and vengeance among 19th-century fur trappers. DiCaprio predicted that Hardy would get an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as a feral frontiersman who leaves DiCaprio’s character for dead after the latter is mauled by a grizzly bear. Hardy bet a tattoo of the winner’s choosing that he wouldn’t. Hardy lost. Hardy recreates DiCaprio’s design on a Post-it note for me. “He wrote, in this really shitty handwriting: ‘Leo knows everything.’ Ha! I was like, ‘OK, I’ll get it done, but you have to write it properly.’”

He was an underachieving student: “From a very privileged position I was underachieving and my desperate parents were like, ‘F–king hell, we’ve got to find something for Tom to do.’… There were systematically, constantly, things that were put across my path where it was, ‘Tom, you need to wake up because there are more important things to do. And you keep on doing stuff that’s nonsense, and you of all people have been born with opportunities.’ So I had words with myself about the reality of wanking about when there’s such a lot to be getting on with.” He’s been sober since 2003, though the impulses are still there. In Canada, he told me about “Arthur”, the orangutan who is the metaphorical manifestation of his destructive urges, which he likens to Winston Churchill’s “black dog” of depression. Always present, never to be ignored.

The sleep deprivation that comes with a new baby: “If anyone else did that to you you’d have them up at the Hague for war crimes.”

Two years after The Revenant’s troubled production: “Because it’s a good two years away it feels… There are still echoes of exhaustion from it, but I think it’s a beautiful film. I want to watch it again now because I have got a really healthy distance. It’s always the way, when people say, ‘It was a really tough time in my life when I was in it,’ in hindsight it’s a very fond memory. At the time it was aarararaghgh” — he makes a noise like a fatally wounded buffalo — “never ending! The Forevernant. It went on forever and it was confusing. The Forever-and-evernant! It was never-ending, confusion, chaos, none of us were in any form of control, we were being controlled, you know? And that was frustrating and stressful.”

What did Mark Rylance say to him when Rylance won the Oscar? “I think he said, ‘F–king amateur.’ Hur hur! Or, ‘This is how it’s done.’ Hur! I can’t remember. But it was just amazing to be there.”

On attending the Oscars: “I don’t think I ever expected to be welcomed to one of those events. I always felt like a bit of a naughty boy, and I always thought part of me would be like, ‘Nah’. And then actually I was like, ‘Oh yeah! I’ll have a sniff of that.’ Obviously there’s that pull and we were both jetlagged and nervous, but f–k me, if you’re going to leave home and do anything we really ought to do this. I’ve got a photo of us in our outfits underneath the 88th Academy Awards logo, and that’s a piece of history, isn’t it? That’s mum and dad in their heyday. They were there. Wicked.” [When a reporter approached Hardy while he waited outside the Dolby Theater, he explained, with perfect Enlightened Dad poise, that he was waiting for Charlotte to finish breast-pumping in the bathroom.]

[From Esquire UK]

There were so many stories about how Alejandro González Iñárritu and Tom were butting heads throughout the production of The Revenant. Now that we’re a year removed from Leonardo DiCaprio’s exhausting Oscar campaign and everything else, I have to say that I feel very Team Nobody in that situation. Do I think Tom probably acted like a pissy baby? Sure. Do I also think Inarritu put his actors through hell for no real reason? Yes. As for Tom’s newfound engagement with journalists… I do hope he learned something positive from that crap last year, but I’m not holding my breath.

Photos courtesy of Esquire UK.