The 1990s hip-hop group Tom Hardy wishes he was part of
Growing up, acting wasn’t Tom Hardy’s only passion. The future star of Venom and The Dark Knight Rises was a big music fan, too, and he took rap especially seriously.
In a video clip posted online, Hardy is shown on the promo circuit for one of his films. The subject of the Wu-Tang Clan comes up, whereupon Hardy makes an honest admission.
“I would have loved to have been a member of the Wu-Tang Clan,” he said, before qualifying his point with a smile. “A secret member.”
The remarkable thing about this comment, which was offered up in jest during an interview, is that it may not be that detached from reality. Hardy is legitimately a serious rap fan, and rumour has it that he’s even worked with a Wu-Tang member.
In 2013, Inspectah Deck joined forces with the duo 7L & Esoteric to create a new supergroup called Czarface. They’ve released a lot of music throughout their time together, but their 11th album featured a potentially surprising guest on the song ‘Czartificial Intelligence.’
Jumping on board for a brief cameo on that track was someone called Frankie Pulitzer, about which little is publicly known. Online, however, some people have suggested that they know exactly who Frankie Pulitzer really is. They believe it’s the rap alter ego of Tom Hardy.
The claim, while surprising, isn’t entirely unthinkable. Hardy, as a young person, wasn’t just a fan of rap music, but he was a practitioner, too. During an interview with the BBC in 2011, revealed that, as a 14 or 15 year old, he took his rapping quite seriously.
The problem was his image and background. “Because I come from a nice middle-class neighborhood, it was a very hard sell,” he conceded. “And I wasn’t very good!”
Nonetheless, the young rapper, who went by the name of Tommy No 1, recorded lots of material, some of which has since leaked online. He apparently was even rubbing shoulders with record execs, but, eventually, his place within the rap game waned and he instead concentrated on acting. His dream of joining the Wu-Tang Clan never materialised, although, if he really is Frankie Pulitzer, then he got closer than most to achieving it.