Tom Hardy loves dogs, killing Batman, and working with Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, in that order. The mumbly Mad Max: Fury Road star, who watched Leonardo DiCaprio eat raw bison liver while shooting The Revenant, will re-team with Knight in Taboo, an eight-episode collaboration between BBC One and FX. Hardy will play James Keziah Delaney, “who returns to 1814 London after 10 years in Africa to discover that he has been left a mysterious legacy by his father,” according to a press release.
“Driven to wage war on those who have wronged him, Delaney finds himself in a face-off against the East India Company, whilst playing a dangerous game between two warring nations: Britain and America.” #TeamUSA. We created MySpace.
Anyway, the rest of the cast was announced today.
Alongside Hardy’s protagonist James Keziah Delaney is Michael Kelly (House of Cards, Everest), who plays American doctor Dumbarton; Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean, Brazil) as Sir Stuart Strange, the head of the East India Company and Delaney’s nemesis; Oona Chaplin (The Crimson Field, The Hour) as Zilpha Geary James’ half-sister; and David Hayman (Macbeth, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) as Brace, Delaney’s trusted man-servant.
Historians are already crying foul over the script’s depiction of the East India Company, which Knight called “the biggest, baddest multinational corporation on Earth.” But the London School of Economics’ Dr. Tirthankar Roy counters, “It made a very positive contribution overall… Its effects were not just the profits the company made for itself. Its major effect was on creating a whole new business world, which wouldn’t have happened without it.”
Don’t mess with Tom Hardy, Dr. Roy. You won’t like what happens. You have a much better chance going after Oona Chaplin.
