While Ridley Scott and Tom Hardy ready themselves for Oscar night, fans can start speculating about the duo’s upcoming collaboration, the FX period miniseries Taboo. The newly released trailer offers plenty of intrigue and rich imagery—funerals and foggy lakes, courtroom outbursts and backroom rumors—but mostly leaves the audience to connect the mysterious dots. The clip teases escalating conflict and an impressive cast that includes veteran actor Jonathan Pryce and fellow former Game of Thrones cast member Oona Chaplin.
Hardy’s clearly the main act here though. He plays James Keziah Delaney, who “returns to 1814 London after 10 years in Africa to discover that he has been left a mysterious legacy by his father” and is driven to take vengeance against the East India Company for unspecified wrongs amidst an international stand-off between Britain and America. The trailer presents him in two very different modes: wild-eyed with a spear and a loincloth and covered in tribal body tattoos, and sharply put-together in a top hat and overcoat. Hardy’s dialogue in the latter mode underscores his character’s stark shift: “I’m not [the same];” “I do know the evil that you do, because I was once part of it;” “I’m a very dangerous man to know.” The show’s U.S. premiere date has not been announced.
