Taron Egerton has revealed that he once looked at a scene with Tom Hardy in Legend and decided it needed a little more… commitment. So he grabbed Hardy’s face and kissed him. Completely unscripted. Completely committed. And, tragically, completely left out of the final film.
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Egerton, 36, spilled the story on Monday’s episode of the Armchair Expert podcast while remembering his time filming the 2015 crime drama. Hardy played both Kray twins, while Egerton played Edward ‘Mad Teddy’ Smith, the real-life lover of Ronnie Kray.
Which means, yes, there was already a gay storyline sitting right there. Egerton simply decided to give it some cinematic punctuation.
Taron Egerton Saw the Moment and Went for It
The scene involved Hardy’s character murdering someone before getting back into a car, where Egerton’s character was waiting in the back.
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“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,” Egerton said.
tom hardy and taron egerton improvising for legend (2015) https://t.co/wc3j7lLc4b pic.twitter.com/D8q3DJkzo3
— teddy smith irl (@teddy_taron) June 4, 2026
Then Egerton made a choice that definitely wasn’t on the call sheet.
“I grabbed his face, and I snogged him. And it wasn’t in the script.”
Some actors ask the director if they can improvise. Some add a funny line. Egerton apparently chose the third option: Surprise! We’re kissing Tom Hardy now. And then, naturally, came the panic.
Things I knew about Legend: Tom Hardy plays gangster twins, one of them is gay
Things I did NOT know about Legend: Taron Egerton plays the gay twin’s lover, and as soon as he walks in, Tom Hardy tells Emily Browning “Btw, I’m a homosexual & I’m the top” AND I FUCKIN SCREAMED pic.twitter.com/bmuEilARDm
— Chucho E. Quintero (@Chucho_Q) July 15, 2018
Egerton said he immediately felt nervous and “backed off,” unsure what Hardy would make of the unexpected move. Looking back, however, he believes Hardy “loved it”.
“At that time, I think he quite liked my chutzpah,” he added.
Honestly, if you are going to freestyle a kiss with Tom Hardy, “chutzpah” is probably the correct amount of confidence to bring.
The Kiss Actually Made Sense for His Character
The improvised moment wasn’t completely out of left field. Egerton was playing Hardy’s lover in a film packed with men performing exaggerated versions of masculinity.
That contrast was part of what attracted Egerton to the role.
“We were depicting a bunch of guys in a hyper-masculine world playing gangsters, but I was playing his lover so my job was kind of to subvert it all,” he said.
And that is where the kiss becomes more than a cheeky bit of on-set improvisation. Egerton saw his character as someone who could disrupt the testosterone-heavy atmosphere surrounding the Krays.
Basically: guns, gangsters, violence—and then Taron Egerton said, Okay, but what if we kissed?
The Gays Were Robbed by the Final Cut
There is, however, one tiny problem with this delightful piece of cinema history: the kiss never made it into the movie. Despite their characters being lovers, they never actually kiss in the final cut of Legend.
So audiences were denied the sight of Taron Egerton spontaneously kissing Tom Hardy in a gangster movie. A sentence that sounds like it should have been on a very different kind of poster.
The scene may have been cut, but Egerton’s story gives us a glimpse of what could have been: one tiny unscripted moment that cut through all that hyper-masculine gangster drama.
And honestly? Somewhere, the deleted-scene gods are having an absolutely fabulous time.