Movie director explained what really happened between Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron during on-set feud

Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller has set the record straight on the widely reported feud between the film's leading stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron.

Released back in 2015, the post-apocalyptic thriller is widely considered to be one of the best action films around and introduced the Mad Max franchise to a new generation.

However, all was not well between the stars Hardy and Theron, who played allies Max and Imperator Furiosa respectively. The tension between the pair was laid bare for the world to see in journalist Kyle Buchanan's 2022 book Blood, Sweat and Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road, which featured interviews with the cast.

One person who particularly felt the tension was Skins and Nosferatu star Nicholas Hoult, who referred to the pair's working relationship 'tense.'

Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy did not see eye-to-eye while making the action thriller (Samir Hussein/Getty Images)

"It was kind of like you’re on your summer holidays and the adults in the front of the car are arguing," he added of Hardy and Theron's working relationship.

Things reportedly got so bad that Theron requested for veteran producer Denise Di Novi to fly out and act as a mediator, after an 'aggressive' confrontation with Hardy over his lateness - a claim which the Peaky Blinders actor later denied - led to her feeling unsafe.

Miller would later weigh in on the claims during the premiere for Mad Max prequel Furiosa, telling The Telegraph the pair were fundamentally 'two very different performers.'

"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," he explained last year, before acknowledging that the Atomic Blonde actor was the opposite.

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

"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."

Director George Miller later acknowledged the pair were very different actors (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Touching on the reports of the pair's relationship being disruptive, he added: "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 disruption that could be avoided."

Both actors have since reflected the hardships of filming in the desert, with Theron calling it a 'tough shoot.'

"It was horrible," she said. "We should not have done that; we should have been better. I can own up to that."

Meanwhile, Hardy admitted that he'd been 'over my head in many ways' at the time, adding: "What she needed was a better, perhaps more experienced partner in me. "That's something that can't be faked. I'd like to think that now that I'm older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion."