Kat Dennings has always had a certain talent for making chaos look charming. As Max Black on 2 Broke Girls, she could turn an eye-roll into an art form and a one-liner into a weapon. Her brand of humor is dry, wicked, and just the right amount of “please don’t make me participate in this nonsense.” So perhaps it was only fitting that, somewhere along the road to becoming a sitcom favorite, Dennings found herself wandering into the gloriously unhinged world of Mad Max.

Before George Miller’s Fury Road sent Tom Hardy roaring across the Wasteland, Dennings was one of the actors testing for the film—and her audition was paired with Hardy’s. What happened next sounds less like a standard Hollywood screen test and more like an acting exercise designed by someone who had never heard the phrase “keep it simple.” Dennings has now looked back on that unforgettable day, and let's say the Wasteland was not the strangest part of the story.

Kat Dennings saw Michael Fassbender's revelation of his disastrous audition for Mad Max: Fury Road on the Happy Sad Confused podcast from a year ago, making it to her feed. And that is exactly why she took to Threads to share about her brutal six-hour audition. Dennings revealed that her audition was a chemistry read with Hardy, meaning the two actors were paired together while testing for roles. What followed was less of a traditional audition and more of an acting class from hell.

George Miller had an acting coach in the room; the actors were asked to switch roles, run around a corner for the camera, and, at one point, perform their dialogue without actually saying the words. Instead, they were encouraged to make noises. 

“I was dying. I mean, Tom Hardy, he really took to this exercise. Like he was able to be extremely free and come up with very creative ways of doing these lines,” Dennings said in the video.

The six-hour audition eventually wrapped with a lunch break, but Dennings’ strange day with Hardy had one more surprise in store. Without a car, she accepted Hardy’s offer to drive her home, where he met her mother before Dennings changed into pajamas and took a nap in the converted garage. Hours later, she returned to find Hardy still there, having tea with her mom and chatting away.

“So I can’t say enough about Tom Hardy. I will be a fan of his for life,” she said in the Threads video.

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The story may have remained buried in Dennings’ memory had Michael Fassbender's revelation not been seen by her on her feed. 

Michael Fassbender recalled his own Mad Max: Fury Road audition back in March 2025 on Happy Sad Confused, which was anything but a disaster for him. He lost on the way to the Warner Bros. lot, arriving nearly an hour late and then finding himself subjected to an acting coach’s unconventional exercises. George Miller’s acting coach asked him to “physicalize” the phrase “get out of the room.” Fassbender, who had been classically trained and already had his own acting process, clearly was not buying the exercise. 

In the end, Fassbender’s audition and Dennings’ experience offer two very different accounts of the same wonderfully bizarre casting process. While Fassbender could not wait to escape the room, Dennings, who says she is still in Marvel's system, walked away impressed by the actor who seemed to thrive in the madness beside her. And perhaps that contrast says something about why Hardy ultimately won George Miller over. Hardy did not just survive the strange exercises—according to Dennings, he embraced them, bringing a freedom and creativity to the audition that clearly made an impression.

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