Tom Hardy’s brand new series Taboo will premiere in a week on BBC One, and whilst the premise of the show is largely a mysterious beyond the fact Hardy’s character James Keziah Delaney is doing whatever he can to reclaim his father’s shipping business, there’s still a lot of hype and excitement building around the show’s debut.
Credit: BBC
Speaking to Digital Spy, Hardy has now opened up more about the show and said the idea – which he came up with alongside his father Edward ‘Chips’ Hardy – “came about from doing Oliver Twist and playing Bill Sykes.”
He added: “To be bluntly honest, I wanted to play Bill Sykes, Sherlock Holmes, Hannibal Lecter, Heathcliff, Marlow… Just every classical character in one.”
As an eight-part original miniseries scripted by Steven Knight and with Ridley Scott as executive producer, Hardy says “it would be wrong” to say Taboo was his family’s “piece”, but insists that their original concept is still central.
“In part it’s Hamlet, there’s Oedipus in there, there’s Heart of Darkness… There’s lots of different stories,” he said. “It’s just trying to contain as many stories as possible without diluting it, and also still making it its own piece.”
Despite being listed as a period piece, Hardy admits he doesn’t know if Downton Abbey fans and the like would enjoy this series.
“But it’s the period drama that I desire to watch,” he concludes. “People might not like this – so accept that, and push that. People will either like it or hate it, but it won’t be middle of the road. Either it’s going to go well or it’s going to go really f**king badly. But it was an effort made in the right pursuit, I believe.”
Taboo debut on Saturday, January 7 at 9.15pm on BBC One.