Patrick Stewart assumed the world would never hear from Tom Hardy again after Star Trek: Nemesis

Ask the average person today if they know who Tom Hardy is, and there’s a good chance they’ll cup a hand over their mouth and say “of course!” in a funny voice, but if you had specifically asked Patrick Stewart that question 20 years ago, he would’ve had a very different answer—and not just because nobody had heard Hardy’s hilarious Bane voice at that point.

In his new memoir Making It So (via Insider), Stewart talks about filming 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, which he says “was particularly weak,” and he cites working with the actor who played the film’s villain as one of the reasons it wasn’t a great shoot. As Stewart writes, this actor was “an odd, solitary young man from London. His name was Tom Hardy.”

Stewart said that Hardy wouldn’t interact with the rest of the cast “on a social level” at all, and he wouldn’t say “good morning” or “good night” when he’d leave. He’d just spend all of his time on set “in his trailer with his girlfriend.” On the day he finished his work on the film, Stewart says Hardy “left without ceremony or niceties” and just walked out the door.” Stewart then turned to co-stars Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes and said: “There goes someone I think we shall never hear of again.” He says it has given him “nothing but pleasure” that Hardy has proven him wrong (hopefully Frakes took the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever at some point).

Now, what’s it going to take to get these two boys in another movie together? Well, what’s it going to take other than a director who is happy to let Hardy cover up most of his face with a mask and/or do a funny voice. Hardy has weirdly aged out of playing an evil clone of Stewart, but they could put both of them in weird masks and still pull that kind of familial relationship off. Maybe a Bane prequel about Bane’s dad? The Two Capones? Venom 3: This Time There’s An Older Man Who Is Also Venom?