George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road threw up an intriguing curveball last month when it essentially relegated Tom Hardy’s protagonist to be a sidekick in his own movie, shifting the focus instead to Charlize Theron’s no-nonsense Imperator Furiosa. For Hardy’s next outing, though, the esteemed British actor is poised to steal the show by playing both Ron and Reggie Kray for Brian Helgeland’s upcoming crime drama, Legend.
Following the first teaser released a few months back, Universal Pictures has lifted the curtain on the domestic trailer for the film, showcasing some of the offbeat comedy and the ways in which Hardy experiments with the dual protagonist set-up. Heck, there are times when the two brothers even square up to one another – sibling rivalry and all that – and Helgeland touched upon the filming process behind these scenes in a recent interview with Yahoo! Movies.
He went, from hour to hour, he would be one or the other. There were exceptions, but he usually Reggie during the first part of the day because it was the bigger part. Then many days Ron didn’t work at all. But if it was the two of them, Tom and I would rehearse in the morning and he’d read both parts and we’d work out blocking. He’d record Ron’s side of the dialogue, give it to sound guy who’d cut it together in a way he could fit his Reggie dialogue in between his Ron dialogue.
Then he’d go off to hair and makeup and come back. He would wear an earpiece that no one could see. We would play Ron in his ear. His stunt man was his body double for Reggie and Ron so he could have someone in front of him to look at. Then we’d play back Reggie’s recording in his ear when he was playing Ron.
Lifted from the pages of John Pearson’s acclaimed novel The Progression Of Violence, Legend will follow the Kray brothers and their rise and fall whilst operating a high-end nightclub out of London’s infamous West End. Building a criminal empire around their decrepit backdrop, the pair were able to hire a string of criminals to carry out their dirty work, enjoying free reign at the top of the proverbial food chain before both Ronald and Reginald Kray were sentenced to prison in 1969.
Emily Browning, David Thewlis, Christopher Eccleston, Chazz Palminteri, Tara Fitzgerald, and Taron Egerton round out the star-studded cast. Legend will premiere first in the UK on September 11 before making its way across the pond, where it will debut Stateside in October.
