The Surprising Inspiration Behind Tom Hardy’s ‘Bikeriders’ Voice

There’s something about the voice of Tom Hardy’s character Johnny in “The Bikeriders” that sounds vaguely familiar. And also, for an imposing biker gang leader, undeniably strange.

The speech is a little nasal, sometimes high-pitched, and even, perhaps unintentionally, downright comical. A bit like… Bugs Bunny?

“So!” Hardy explodes, leaning into his smartphone camera and flashing a smile as if declaring “Jackpot!”

“Yes, Bugs Bunny, 100%,” he said. “Why? Well, there’s a playfulness to it. I like to mix ‘Taxi Driver’ and Disneyland to balance out my character.

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Essentially, Hardy uses Johnny’s voice to lull viewers into a false sense of security.

There is an implicit softness in his speech that is completely at odds with the gang leader ready to rumble at any moment with his Vandals motorcycle club, a stand-in for the real Chicago Outlaws club that was the subject of the photographer’s report and journalist Danny Lyon. 1968 book “The Bikeriders”.

“I like to counterbalance,” says Hardy, known for his comic book antihero in 2018’s “Venom” and his star turn in 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

“That means if you’re presented with a character like Johnny, this guy with, quote, masculine biker sexuality, I want to look for traits that are a complete counterpoint to that, so what’s not not cool, what’s not sexy,” Hardy said of his odd vocal choice. “I look for the contradictory elements that exist in the human condition.”

But Hardy also plays to the inherent power of a character who seems mysteriously menacing, much like Marlon Brando’s terribly soft-spoken mob boss in 1972’s “The Godfather.”

“Anyone who tries to adopt power in a room is not going to scream, just like people who talk loudly in a bar fight are about to get knocked out,” says Hardy. “A big, silent man, he makes you lean.”

Marlon Brando’s ‘Wild One’ is a touchstone for Tom Hardy in ‘The Bikeriders’

In “Bikeriders,” which also stars Austin Butler and Jodie Comer, Hardy’s Johnny seeks a sense of community among his blue-collar friends and decides to start a motorcycle club. As a founder, he is looking for a way to lead a project.

One day, Johnny discovers this while watching a movie on television. It’s the now-classic 1953 film, “The Wild One,” in which a young Brando plays the leader of a motorcycle gang that threatens a small Western town.

In “Bikeriders,” we see Hardy’s Johnny watching Brando – whose character is also named Johnny – deliver his most famous line of that film. When a woman connected to the gang asks Johnny what he’s rebelling against, Brando remains deadpan: “What’s the matter with you?” As he does so, Hardy’s Johnny is seen imitating the phrase.

Hardy, who loves to philosophize about the acting profession, embarks on a deconstruction of his own work.

“Johnny is the oldest in his gang, the leader of the pack, and yet he has to watch a movie with Marlon Brando to learn how to look cool,” he says. “Johnny is heroic but pathetic, miserable but brave, funny but makes terrible choices. So his voice, yes, it was designed to be a little scary. This manipulates this notion of power.

Silence is a tool of the greatest actors, says Tom Hardy

Although Hardy says he wasn’t trying to borrow from Brando at all for “Bikeriders,” he clearly admires the legendary actor, who died in 2004 at the age of 80.

“Marlon was a genius, a man who struck the right chord at the right time and helped start this hive of method acting,” Hardy says, referring to a style that requires actors to completely disappear into their roles. “If there’s any (Brando) in my Johnny, it’s just a residue.”

What strikes Hardy most about Brando’s magic is not so much his performance as his reactions. Typically, when Brando’s characters are called to speak, he waits, Hardy says.

“Look at him, just as the camera pans over him, a lot of times he sandbags, he looks away, he creates a tense moment, and only then does he come back to his line,” he says. “One of Marlon’s greatest tools was silence.”

That said, Hardy isn’t a huge fan of “The Wild One,” one of the icon’s first mainstream hits after tearing up the screen in 1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

“I watched a little bit of it and honestly I thought it was unwatchable,” he says. “It just seemed old-fashioned, and almost like a parody, which is of course what you’d expect. But for its time, it stood out. It was rocket science then. » Hardy laughs. “But yeah, if I had modeled myself on this movie and had done a performance where my Johnny was like, ‘Hey, bada boom, bada bing, bada bang,’ the director would just say, ‘Please please, stop doing that.’ ‘ »

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Bikeriders’ Star Tom Hardy Breaks Down His Brando Scene