Taron Egerton, 36
, revealed on the “Armchair Expert” podcast that he kissed his costar
Tom Hardy, 48
, during an unscripted moment while filming the 2015 crime drama “Legend.”
Egerton, a Welsh actor
,
born November 10, 1989
, made the confession during
an appearance on Armchair Expert aired August 10
, with hosts
Dax Shepard and Monica Padman
.
The actor played
Mad Teddy Smith
in the film, which
starred Hardy as twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who became powerful crimelords in London’s underworld in the 1960s
.
Ronnie was an open homosexual, and Egerton played one of the boys gathered around him
. The film explored the brothers’ relationship and their criminal enterprise.
Egerton described the spontaneous on-set moment to the podcast hosts. “There was a scene where he murders someone and gets back in the car and I was in the back of the car waiting for him,” he recalled. “I grabbed his face, and I snogged him. And it wasn’t in the script.”
He said he felt bold making the move. “I was so pleased with myself,” Egerton shared, before adding that he worried Hardy might not react well. “I sort of backed off” afraid of his costar’s reaction.
But Egerton believes the kiss landed well with Hardy. “I think he quite liked my chutzpah,” he said. Monica Padman, the podcast’s co-host, called the smooch “ballsy.”
Egerton explained his thinking about the character and the role. “We were depicting a bunch of guys in a hypermasculine world playing gangsters, but I was playing his lover so my job was kind of to subvert it all.”
Director Brian Helgeland created space for spontaneity on set. The actor noted that Helgeland was “very open to [them] improvising and trying things out.”
Egerton credited his instincts as an actor. “I have all my insecurities and all my fears, but one thing I’m not worried about is I believe myself as an actor,” he said.
Working with Hardy felt intimidating but exciting. Egerton called the fellow actor “unpredictable” and an “intimidating” colleague, but said he was mostly “excited” about sharing the screen.
Earlier in his career, during the filming of “Legend,” Egerton praised both the director and his costar in an on-set interview. He said of Helgeland, “[He’s] an Oscar-winning writer but seems to delight in you not honoring what he’s written. He welcomes improvisation, not even suggesting things before a scene.”
Egerton added at the time, “I think he quite likes it when you surprise him. There are endless opportunities to add little bits and bobs in.”
He also called Hardy “warm-hearted” and “very generous man” in that earlier interview.
The unscripted kiss never made it to the final cut. As Egerton told the podcast hosts, the scene “never made the movie.”
In the viral moment that came to light through his podcast appearance, Egerton name-dropped Hardy and described how their professional relationship had room for creative risk-taking on set, a detail that highlighted both his confidence as a younger actor and Hardy’s collaborative approach to filmmaking during the production of “Legend.”