2 Broke Girls and WandaVision actress Kat Dennings took to social media to recall her experience auditioning opposite Tom Hardy for 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. Although Dennings at one point likens the audition to being like “an acting class if it was [on] the worst day of your life,” her story ultimately takes a surprisingly sweet and funny turn.
Dennings explained on TikTok how her screen test – she doesn’t specify which role she was up for but presumably it was for one of Immortan Joe’s Brides – took an epic six hours. It was a chemistry read between her and Hardy, who, of course, went on to win the title role of “Mad Max” Rockatansky.
Dennings, who still lived at home with her parents at the time, said director George Miller didn’t do much talking during the audition, with a person she believes was an acting coach leading the process instead.
@katdenningsss With a twist at the end
♬ Quirky Suspenseful Indie-Comedy(1115050) – Kenji Ueda
“The dialogue was a couple of pages, and kind of vague. And basically, what happened was, an acting class, if it was, um, the worst day of your life. At one point, they had us switch roles. They had the camera and had us like running around the corner,” Dennings said.
“The worst part of it, I do believe, was when the acting coach told us to say the lines without saying the lines, encouraging us to just make noises instead of the lines. I was dying. I mean, Tom Hardy, he really took to this exercise. Like, he was able to be extremely free and come up with very creative ways of doing these lines.”
Dennings said “the best part of the story” is its ending and she’s absolutely right.
After the audition was finally over after six grueling hours, Dennings – who didn’t have a car – planned to go down the corner to call for a ride, but Hardy then offered to give her a lift.
“He drove me home. He was so lovely. We get to my house, which was my parents’ house, because I still lived at home with my parents. And he came inside and he met my mom, and he was like, oh, what a nice house. She was like, oh, come on in. And I was like, all right, Tom, well, this is a very special day. Uh, I hope, uh, you move further in this experience because I know that I’m not going to. I went back to the converted garage where I lived, put my pajamas on, took a nap. A few hours later, I go back into the main house, and Tom Hardy is still there. Having tea with my mother, and just chatting it up. So… I can’t say enough about Tom Hardy. I will be a fan of his for life. I think he’s a wonderful person, and my mom still talks about him.”
While Dennings didn’t land a role in Mad Max: Fury Road, she did join the MCU as Darcy Lewis in the Thor films.
Hardy, you may have heard, just dropped a rap album he collaborated on with Czarface where, under the alias Frankie Pulitzer, he raps about everything from Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin to Kathy Bates.
