The Mystery Of What Happened Between Tom Hardy And Drew McWeeny Continues To Grow

Some of the greatest mysteries of our time have gone unsolved. What exactly happened to Amelia Earhart? Who was the Zodiac Killer? Why is Adam Sandler? Today, we’ve got another twisted, enigmatic story to add to this historic canon: What happened between Tom Hardy and Drew McWeeny at HitFix? The world may never truly know.

Like all good mysteries, this one started at a press junket, where the morale is low, the lights are industrial, and a lot of the people are high. As we shared yesterday, McWeeny claims he was set to interview Hardy about The Revenant, but something, somehow went awry; as such, McWeeny took to Twitter to air his grievances. In short, McWeeny’s side of the story is that Hardy had made him wait three hours, then refused to grant him an interview. “Tom Hardy should stop doing press junkets,” wrote McWeeny. “He’s terrible at them, and he makes it impossible for anyone to do their jobs.” He signed off with a flourish: “Dick move.”

Hardy, not one to take himself too seriously, but also not one to let someone call him a “delicate flower,” clapped back soon thereafter with a lengthy post on his website. “Thank you for your email offering to retract your misdirected anger. I apologize for any part of you having to wait for an interview and then not get one,” wrote Hardy, who later in the letter offers to post this email publicly. “The truth is, we (as I was paired for all interviews that day) were unaware that ANYBODY was waiting. Or even went without a TV interview. Someone somewhere must have thought putting it on me was a lot easier than losing their journalist relations for the ongoing junkets and multiple movies that are pending. I wish I would have napped to be honest.” (I’d watch a video of Tom Hardy napping, for the record.)

Hardy went on to explain that Fox had given him a different version of the McWeeny story, sharing that the studio “never actually told (you) that the interview was cancelled, simply that they were running behind schedule. They also said that ‘Drew chose not to wait and left. Had he stayed, he would have gotten his interview as planned.’  Fuck.. Plot thickens … Who knows what to trust my friend, but I do know the cancellation was definitely not made by myself.”

After “resisting the urge” to dare McWeeny to talk shit to his face (“which I doubt you have the balls to do”), Hardy signed off just as cheekily as one might expect from the man who’s proud to have sprinkled the old-timey Internet with half-naked photos of himself: “Best regards and thanks for calling me an asshole a lot. Tommy xxx.”

Ah, wonderful. Another classic case of misinformation and misunderstandings caused by public-relations politics, closed! Only a few egos bruised and, I don’t know, maybe two-to-four publicists roundly fired right before the holidays. Now we can all go home and spend time with our families and send angry tweets at celebrities in the quiet of our childhood bedrooms.

I’m kidding, of course. Nothing this serious, with such global — nay, intergalactic — implications, ever ends so simply. After reading Hardy’s post, McWeeny again took to Twitter to refute the actor’s claims.

The mystery of What Happened To Drew McWeeny And Tom Hardy At This Press Junket deepens and widens. Did Hardy blow off McWeeny? Did Hardy invent an email from McWeeny? Did somebody impersonate McWeeny, sending an apology email to Hardy? How do these people have Tom Hardy’s email address? Am I missing access to some kind of celebrity email database? The Earth is trembling with the weight of this enigma. Our children will study it for years to come.

UPDATE: McWeeny has written a lengthy post over at HitFix addressing the situation, and how it’s indicative of a larger problem with press junkets, which he calls a “fundamentally broken system.”

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