How 'Bikeriders' stars Tom Hardy, Austin Butler channeled motorcycle gang culture

Tom Hardy calls it “the tribe.”

And in his book, you’re either in or you’re out. You’re either an actor who is “there to do the work” or you’re not. You’re either fully committed to the group’s mission or ...

Sound a bit like a motorcycle gang?

Perhaps little coincidence then that the core acting trio in “The Bikeriders” (in theaters Friday) – which also includes fellow British actor Jodie Comer and Los Angeles native Austin Butler − shared a tribal bond in order to conjure members of a Chicago motorcycle club.  

Join our Watch Party!Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

“It’s a subjective feeling for me,” says Hardy, 46. “But I can quickly identify if someone is part of the tribe. Jodie clearly is, as is Austin, who’s an untapped new resource in the world.”

Butler and Comer are quick to return Hardy’s compliments.

“I’m so fascinated by him,” says Butler, 32. “Our characters have a love, so that bled into our relationship. He has a big heart and big sense of humor.”

Adds Comer, 31: “I have been well aware of Tom over the years, so to suddenly be thrown into a scene with this man you’ve admired, it was just brilliant.”

Hardy waves off the praise.

“It’s the difference between coming (to the set) to eat or being ready to be eaten, and I come to get eaten,” he says. “You are ready to try and fail. You fall off the horse, and you get up. The reward for taking a chance sometimes is humiliation, but you can get pure gold, too. The tribe always is ready to go on the journey.”

'The Bikeriders' is a fictional account of the lives of real motorcycle club members in 1960s Chicago

“The Bikeriders” is writer and director Jeff Nichols’ fictional take on photographer Danny Lyon’s 1968 nonfiction book of the same name. Hardy plays Johnny, the tough founder of the Vandals motorcycle club, a man whose quest for simple camaraderie spirals into something far more hellish.

The story has echoes of everything from the 1953 Marlon Brando cult film “The Wild One” to writer Hunter S. Thompson’s brazen 1967 gang-embed account “Hell’s Angels.”

But the movie finds its own road, thanks, in large part, to powerhouse performances from the lead actors, as well as riveting supporting turns from Michael Shannon as a looney biker named Zipco and Norman Reedus as Funny Sonny, clearly a nod to the notorious Hell's Angels leader Sonny Barger.

The Vandals club starts as just that, but it soon expands and grows more violent. That pressure forces many of its founding members to reconsider why they are part of the gang, none more so than Benny (Butler), a quiet but angry die-hard biker whose love for Kathy (Comer) creates torn allegiances.

Director Jeff Nichols told The Cincinnati Enquirer, part of the USA TODAY Network, that Lyon's photos and interviews caught "the full breadth of a subculture. ... You start to get an understanding of how these people's brains worked. Why they didn't feel like they belonged in the mainstream, why they felt like they needed to move to the outside and the effect that had on them. I fell in love with that idea."

Nichols confesses that fear of the real gang, the Outlaws, kept the project on the back burner for decades. "They exist, and, as far as I know, are pretty intimidating. So there was that hurdle to try to figure out, 'How do I not step on their toes? How do I fictionalize this enough to have the freedom to do what I want to do?' "

Interestingly, Hardy, Butler and Comer had very different journeys to the heart of their respective characters. While each made sure to study Lyon’s book, which combined photos with interviews of the real-life members of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club, their approaches ranged from inspired-by to faithful re-creations.

In Hardy’s case, “the book and its images was something I actually was aware of long before I came to this movie.” When building up the character of Johnny, Hardy decided to shy away from Lyon’s interview tapes of the Outlaws’ real leader.

“There’s the real Johnny, sure, but is that the Johnny that could sustain a movie?” Hardy asks rhetorically.

Butler had no choice but to imagine what a brooding, faithful gang leader’s lieutenant might be like.

“The real Benny, in the book, he was one of the few people who was never interviewed, and there were no great, clear pictures of him, you just see him leaning over a pool table,” he says. “So he was a mystery. I had to figure out where he might fit into the tapestry of all these characters.”

Benny does a lot of his talking with his fists in “Bikeriders,” leaving Butler to channel a taciturn intensity that the actor leveraged to the hilt as Elvis in Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic.

“He’s a guy of few words, so I had to figure out what he was thinking, mostly,” says Butler.

Jodie Comer had hours of tapes to study to nail the Midwestern accent of Kathy

In stark contrast to her co-stars, Comer not only had images of Kathy but also multiple audio tapes from Lyon’s interviews with the woman who loves her man but comes to hate that he’s a part of a motorcycle club.

Comer is nothing if not a chameleon, as evidenced by a resume that includes playing a psychopathic assassin in the British spy series “Killing Eve” and a woman dealing with sexual assault in her award-winning one-woman play “Prima Facie.”

For “Bikeriders,” the Liverpool native morphed into a chatty, wide-eyed Midwesterner. “It was fun,” she says simply.

Her transformation still finds Butler shocked.

“When we started the project, Jeff (Nichols) sent me 30 minutes of the actual Kathy. Then days later, he played an audio file for me of Kathy, and I said, ‘No, I’ve heard this, you sent it to me already.’ And he said, ‘No, that’s not Kathy, that’s Jodie,’ ” says Bulter. “I am endlessly impressed with her.”

Hardy may be impressed, too, but for him, it's what's expected when you’re part of the tribe.

“It’s the job, mate, end of story,” he says. “Massive respect whenever anyone makes that ultimate effort. Like Jodie. Like Austin. The fame and celebrity that we all have, that’s different from coming to work with a mission of doing the job well. That’s the only thing that really matters.”

Contributing: Haadiza Ogwude, The Cincinnati Enquirer