Directed by first-time feature director Tom Shankland, the film fell somewhere between the psychological thriller Se7en and the more gratuitous torture fest of the Saw franchise movies. It didn’t make much of an impact on its release; it had a lukewarm reception in the UK, with most reviewers regarding the film as unconvincing and a touch tedious.
Landing the role in Waz did, however, turn out to be a pivotal point in Tom’s life and career. It was on the set of this film that he met former US Marine turned personal trainer Patrick Monroe – otherwise known as Pnut. Having cemented their friendship, the pair began to work together regularly and it is Pnut whom Tom credits for helping him achieve the remarkable physical transformations in evidence in many of his films. Tom’s respect for his friend shines through whenever he talks about him. ‘He’s everything I ever wanted to be. He’s done so much and he’s potentially a truly dangerous, fierce man. But he’s the softest guy I’ve ever met. Full of humanity. And humour. And tolerance. Everything that I really want to be,’ he told Men’s Health magazine.
It’s not just his physical form that Tom entrusts to Pnut, it’s also his mental wellbeing. ‘Counsel… I can’t keep counsel with myself because I always tell myself the wrong thing. I have to keep people nearby from whom I can learn.’
It would be fair to say that Pnut’s presence has been a driving force in Tom’s upward trajectory. The pair met just as Tom was starting to sink his teeth into meatier roles, ones that demanded physical change as well as the ability to shift mentally. It was Pnut who made sure Tom went about changing from emaciated Stuart Shorter in Stuart: A Life Backwards to bulked-up Charles Bronson in the correct way. More recently, Pnut has had his work cut out as Tom has had to pack on even more muscle for the roles of Tommy Conlon in Warrior and Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.
Jack Donnelly from Channel Four’s series Cape Wrath has become something of a legendary character in TV history, thanks to Tom’s deeply sinister portrayal of him. With Jack, Tom showed just how far he could take it when inhabiting menacing and unstable characters. The role was a great opportunity for him to venture even further into the recesses of his psyche and, because the character of Jack had committed a violent crime in his teens, Tom sought to get under his skin by researching the boys who had killed James Bulger. Duane Clark, the director of Cape Wrath was unequivocal about why he chose Tom to play Jack. ‘The minute he walked into the audition, I knew he was what we needed,’ he explained to the Telegraph. ‘When his name came up, the producers said he was too posh. But anyone who meets Tom knows he is a nice middle-class boy from East Sheen with a very dark underbelly.’
It was in 2007 that Channel Four cast a dark shadow over the summer months with its new, much-hyped series. The show kicks off with the Brogan family (Danny and Evelyn and their teenage twins Mark and Zoe) arriving, blindfolded, at an isolated settlement called Meadowlands. The reason for the secrecy is because they are part of a witness protection programme, but viewers aren’t let in on this secret immediately. With its uniform houses in brightly coloured cladding, Meadowlands looks idyllic – but on closer inspection is a spooky and disconcerting place. The Brogans feel even more ill at ease when it transpires the residents of the town have already been informed of their arrival and even their (assumed) names.
At first, only Danny knows the truth about Meadowlands: that, in fact, all of its residents have been relocated there by the authorities, so have either transgressed or been the victim of a crime. Whatever their story, they are all there for a reason and they all have murky secrets to hide. The very fact that they live in Meadowlands at all means they have a past they must forget and a present they are forced to embrace. As the creepy local cop Bernard Wintersgill mutters to Danny: ‘The past is not just another country – it’s another planet.’ The town is closely monitored and only those with permission arrive – though no one ever seems to leave.
The most unsettling – and memorable – character we meet in Episode One is handyman Jack Donnelly – or as his scrappy business card would have it, Jack ‘of all trades’. Jack is a baseball-hat-wearing psychopathic sex offender whose presence is described by another Meadowlands resident as ‘looming’. He is by turns intimidating and angry, and the violence within him is roused if those he is threatening show fear.
From his first scene it is clear that Jack is both a disturbed and disturbing man. He creeps up behind Zoe, sniffing her hair and standing invasively close. Zoe’s reaction, however, is not quite what he expects – she shows no fear of him and instead acts suggestively, encouraging him to come and see her at home on the flimsy proviso of fixing a light. At no point is Zoe scared of Jack – rather, she is convinced that she alone can cure him of his deviance and goes so far as to say that she is his ‘last hope’. His relationship with her, while deeply dysfunctional, is different from those he has with other women. For example, Jack is also getting his kicks from an abusive relationship with doctor’s wife Abigail. With her husband all but ignoring her at home, Abigail indulges in the unbalanced relationship with Jack because attention from him, she feels, is preferable to no attention at all.
Given his behaviour and how much of a threat Danny sees him as being to his daughter, it’s no surprise that Jack comes to a violent end as the first episode draws to a close – though he does return as a ghost to offer advice to Sergeant Wintersgill, who is determined to find out the truth about what happened to him. Ironic, considering it is Wintersgill who beats Donnelly to within an inch of his life on the football pitch after Danny expresses his concern for Zoe’s safety around the handyman. Such is the twisted justice meted out in Meadowlands.
While the series looked promising when it was first broadcast, it didn’t become the cult hit it was supposed to be. The intention was for it to fall somewhere between the mystery of Lost and the veiled suburban menace of Desperate Housewives, but it somehow failed to hit the mark. As Jaci Stephen commented: ‘In trying to take its lead from such shows, it ends up being a weak carbon copy.’ The mystery was at times overplayed to the point of becoming confusing, and the goings-on were perhaps just a little too odd for viewers to be able to realistically buy in to them. Ratings for Cape Wrath fell below expectations and the planned second series was never commissioned.
The show wasn’t without its redeeming features, though. The central performance from David Morrissey was strong and convincing, as was the insidious Sergeant Wintersgill played by Ralph Brown. For all its weirdness, many viewers felt that Tom’s performance as Jack was one of the best – if not the best – things about Cape Wrath and that the series lost one of its biggest draws when he was killed off. The Observer columnist Kathryn Flett, for one, raved about his presence in the show: ‘Tom Hardy, as the terrifying Jack Donnelly, was very dangerously, positively murderously, dark and twisted… and as sexy as hell with it.’
Evil, it seemed, was the order of the day and for those who love to see Tom at his villainous best, it was exciting to hear that he was to play Bill Sikes in a forthcoming BBC adaptation of Oliver Twist. For Tom, it would have been hard to pass up this gig. As well as being excited about working with EastEnders writer Sarah Phelps, the show would see him reunited with The Virgin Queen director Coky Giedroyc. To complete a triumvirate that he’s referred to as ‘magic’ was casting director Maggie Lunn. If that wasn’t enough, the Nancy to his Bill Sikes would be played by Sophie Okonedo, with whom he’d loved working on Scenes of a Sexual Nature.
Over the years, there have been numerous retellings of the Charles Dickens classic, so the challenge for any reworking is always how to breathe new life into the material. Amongst the most memorable adaptations are David Lean’s 1948 film starring Alec Guinness as Fagin, Carol Reed’s film version of Lionel Bart’s musical, Oliver! and Roman Polanski’s 2005 film which saw Ben Kingsley take on the role of Fagin, with Jamie Foreman as Bill Sikes. How would this series go about offering a fresh perspective on the story we think we all know inside out?
For one thing, the struct
ure of this Oliver Twist would be different from other classic adaptations that had gone before it: the first instalment was an hour-long episode and was followed by half-hour segments, which were to be aired on consecutive nights. This approach had been tried out for the BBC adaptation of Bleak House in 2005 and could be construed as going back to basics with Dickens’ material. His novels were originally written with the intention of feeding them to the public in serial form, so his skill was in constructing a story to which readers would want to return for more (no pun intended) week after week. This kind of rolling drama with a cliffhanger at the end of each episode is of course exactly how EastEnders is formatted for television, so was familiar territory for Phelps. ‘Dickens wrote for an immediate response from an audience that just wants to be told a story. EastEnders, at its best, has that,’ she commented to Time Out. What she really wanted to do was to create ‘an Oliver Twist for our times’.
Tom had his own theory about why a new exploration of Oliver Twist would stand up in its own right. To him, it was the same as when approaching any classic like Dickens or Shakespeare – the material has been reinvented time and again but each time, the group of people working on the project can mould it into a new form. ‘Everybody’s got a perspective and [when] you get a team together, the alchemy on each project will be different from the last.’
Phelps’s refreshing and accomplished script was responsible for attracting a superior British cast to the production. In the spirit of bringing a new slant to the story, some of the actors appointed were ones you might not readily think of as being a conventional fit for these established Dickens characters. Traditionally, actors who have played Fagin have been thin and stooped but, in a genius move, Timothy Spall was cast to play him. Phelps knew she wanted the actor who played Fagin to be ‘somebody more expansive’ than in the past and, with Spall, they created a Fagin who was more colourful and complex than previous incarnations. He is charming but beneath the charm lies a steely desire for self-preservation. ‘He manages to use his warmth as a channel for his deviousness,’ observed Spall of his character.
Julian Rhind-Tutt, better known for his role in cult comedy Green Wing was cast as the sinister Monks, Oliver’s nemesis; and Sarah Lancashire (previously the bubbly Raquel in Coronation Street) was to be the conniving, grasping Mrs Corney. Rob Brydon, better known for his comedy acting, was to play the unyielding judge, Mr Fang. Unconventional choices, but they all brought something new and surprising to their characters.
The casting decisions for Oliver Twist were vital in giving it more resonance with the 21st century. There has traditionally been a tendency to portray Oliver as an angelic, naïve, slightly wet lad – and the actors who have played him have often had accents which sound more like Surrey schoolboy than workhouse orphan. When writing her Oliver, Sarah Phelps had a clear idea of what she wanted from her protagonist. Oliver is an orphan who has been passed from baby farm to the grim confines of the workhouse. He’s been hungry his whole life, mistreated, but has had enough nerve to challenge the figures of authority around him. Phelps’s Oliver would be no angel: he would be a tough child, albeit with a good, kind soul.
Having auditioned 750 boys, Maggie Lunn then happened to ask a friend if she knew any young actors who would be suitable for the role. This friend knew the mother of William Miller and he was put forward for the part. He was ideal in looks and in personality: he had brown hair, startling, honest eyes and he radiated confidence. ‘He looks beautiful but he’s a little fighter and he looks people in the eye, which is what I wanted with my Oliver – that he looks Bill Sikes in the eye.’
Her decision was spot on – Miller nailed completely what she had wanted to achieve with the character. There is a scene which captures the essence of this Oliver perfectly. It is one in which he looks Sikes straight in the eye and tells him that he’s not scared of him because he’s already seen worse in his life, and it is one of the most powerful and affecting in the drama. The Independent was effusive in its praise for Miller in the lead role, saying: ‘The real casting coup is 11-year-old William Miller as an Oliver far removed from the wan child actor who usually inhabits the role. Miller is also probably a far cry from the somewhat soupy Oliver that Dickens created, but the story is better for it.’
Casting Sophie Okonedo as Nancy was also an inspired choice. Phelps admitted that she was fed up with period dramas set in London always being dominated by white faces and was determined that her Nancy would be black or mixed race. In reality, the London of Dickens’ time was ethnically diverse – it was home to Jewish and Irish immigrants and by the mid-19th century there were already second and third generation black Africans living in the capital. Okonedo brought to Nancy a balance of fearlessness and tenderness.
The relationship between Bill Sikes and Nancy is another part of Oliver Twist we might assume we already know inside out. But this new script and the pairing of Sophie Okonedo with Tom Hardy meant that the focus was not solely on the abusive nature of their relationship. Instead it sought to show that affection and a chemistry of sorts was present between them. In this drama, the killing of Nancy is as violent as ever but we subsequently see Sikes unable to come to terms with the reality that his blows have killed her. He deludes himself into thinking that he’s given her a punishment beating and implores her to get up, struggling to let his eyes rest on what he has done. When Bill goes on the run with Oliver, his guilt is in evidence as he is haunted by visions of Nancy (which is referred to in Dickens’ book but which is often left out of dramatisations).
Bill Sikes is unquestionably a bully who maintains his status through intimidation and violence, but to have played him as a larger-than-life aggressor was neither what this new take on the story required, nor was it how Tom wanted to develop the character. In the 1968 film of Oliver! Oliver Reed had put in a masterful and memorable performance as Sikes. It was impossible for Tom to ignore Reed’s portrayal but he was confident in his own interpretation of the man. ‘I could never go up against a performance as classic as that. Oliver Reed played Bill as this horrible, booming, alcoholic brawler. I play him softer, a bit sensual and maybe a bit more pathetic,’ Tom told The New Review magazine.
In making this an Oliver Twist relevant to today’s society, Bill was presented as a threatening presence but also as a man who displays certain vulnerabilities. This was familiar territory to Tom who, rather than play these kinds of baddies at full throttle, always pulled back and sought out their weaknesses to create more convincing and shaded characters. He did his homework on developing a 360-degree Sikes, saying, ‘What’s interesting for me to explore is where the vulnerability is going to be with a character like Bill,’ he said. ‘This manifests itself in relationships with Nancy and Bullseye – and gin… he’s trying to fill something with the companionship of a good woman, with the dog and with getting out of his head, which to me immediately ring [sic] alarm bells of somebody who needs a cuddle.’
He also admitted that the character research and development he had been putting into prisoner Charles Bronson would be coming in useful for Bill Sikes. The filming of Bronson had been delayed by a year, so ‘I put a lot of the work I did on him into Bill’.
Tom’s portrayal of Bill Sikes is mesmerising. Every scene in which he appears is infused with knife-edge tension and he is like a coiled spring, waiting to be triggered. This character doesn’t show his brutal side by being ostentatiously belligerent but succeeds in being terrifying by his stillness – the softly spoken words and penetrating stares are enough to make the blood run cold. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, John Preston summed up Tom’s performance perfectly, saying: ‘This was by far the most sinister Sikes I’ve ever seen – this was a man seething with aggression, his eyes forever roaming round seeking someone to bottle or bash.’
The fact that the drama was filmed in London added to its air of authenticity. As previously mentioned, budget restraints have forced the making of many dramas out of the UK and into Eastern Europe. In fact, Roma
n Polanksi’s feature-length adaptation of Oliver Twist was filmed in the Czech Republic. For this Oliver, though, director Coky Giedroyc and production designer Grenville Horner devoted time to scouring London for appropriate locations for filming and then decided how they would fit those locations into the story. Horner knew that he didn’t want to just copy how other period dramas had tried to depict London and instead went back to some illustrative source material from Dickens’ time for his references.
Each part of the drama has a unique look to capture the changing mood depending on where Oliver is on his journey. The workhouse is filmed in grey tones (to match the gruel, which was in fact Ready Brek made with water, with a dash of black food colouring thrown in); London, by contrast, is full of bustle and noise; Fagin’s den is intriguing and colourful while the sanctuary represented by Brownlow’s house is all cool colours and clean lines.
The hard work and careful thought that had gone into ensuring that this production held its own as an interpretation of the Dickens story paid off. 8 million viewers tuned in to watch the first episode, which was aired on 18 December 2007. Most critics, too, seemed to appreciate Oliver Twist and agreed that it was a dark and brooding piece with a magnificent cast. The Sunday Telegraph even stated that, had five stars not been their highest rating for a show, they would have given Oliver Twist six stars. Praise indeed!
As for Tom, he’d had a ball. He’d admitted that he’d loved the rollercoaster nature of Dickens stories and likened them to oscillating between the mood of Taxi Driver one minute, and Disneyworld the next. ‘Oliver Twist is a great thing to be a part of – and I’m in it!’ he enthused.
Tom Hardy Page 10