Expecting Tom Hardy to be on time is like expecting an upgrade to business class just because it’s your birthday.

It’s never going to happen.

Hardy was essentially fired from his British gangster drama MobLand, although officially, it seems more like Paramount+ opted not to pick up his contract for the upcoming third season. Season two, which finished filming in March, is due for release later this year.

Puck News reported that Hardy had repeatedly clashed with producers Jez Butterworth and David Glasser, and had gotten to the point where Butterworth had threatened to quit.

Hardy was also reportedly frequently late to set, holding up production, and had asked to give notes on the scripts, wanted to change dialogue and made it known he was unhappy that the show was morphing into an ensemble piece rather than one focused on his character.

Deadline had added that there was also tension between Hardy and his co-stars. The series also features Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Paddy Considine, Joanne Froggatt and Lara Pulver.

MobLand is set in London and is centred on a crime family, the Harrigans, who are in a battle royale against a rival clan, the Stevensons. It was created by Ronan Bennett and Guy Ritchie served as the set-up director, helming the first two episodes and establishing the style and tone for the show.

Hardy plays a fixer for the Harrigans with Brosnan and Mirren playing the patriarch and matriarch.

Reports of Hardy’s inconsiderate on-set behaviour is hardly new. He’s known for being a mercurial and sometimes volatile presence in the workplace.

Famously, he and Charlize Theron were in a full-blown feud during production of Mad Max: Fury Road which was said to stem from his constant tardiness and unpreparedness, and also from their differing working style.

Director George Miller told The Telegraph UK in 2024, “Tom has a damage to him but also a brilliance that comes with it, and whatever was going on with him at the time, he had to be coaxed out of his trailer.

“Whereas Charlize was incredibly disciplined – a dancer by training, which told in the precision of her performance – and always the first one on set.

“I’m an optimist, so I saw their behaviour as mirroring their characters, where they had to learn to co-operate in order to ensure mutual survival. There’s no excuse for it, and I think there’s a tendency in this business to use great performances as an excuse for other disruptions that could be avoided.”

In journalist Kyle Bunchanan’s oral history of Fury Road book, Blood, Sweat and Chrome, cast and crew, including Theron, likened their clash to parents fighting.

One incident saw Theron show up at the 8am call-time and sat in the war rig in full costume and make-up and waited three hours for Hardy to show up, and everyone knew he couldn’t be relied on to be on time.

“He was notorious for never being on time in the morning. If the call time was in the morning, forget it – he didn’t show up,” camera operator Mark Goellnicht said in the book.

Patrick Stewart, in his memoirs Making It So, also recalled Hardy on the set of 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis as being “an odd, solitary young man from London”.

Stewart wrote, “Tom wouldn’t engage with any of us on a social level. Never said ‘good morning’, never said ‘good night’ and spent the hours he wasn’t needed on set in his trailer with his girlfriend.

“He was by no means hostile – it was just challenging to establish any rapport with him.”

In 2015, Hardy himself admitted he can be a challenging colleague. He told Esquire, “I have a reputation for being difficult. And I am, I am actually. But I’m not unreasonable. It used to be that if somebody hurt me I’d lash out a bit, in order to get them to stop. It ultimately comes from fear.”