(NOTE LANGUAGE) While there were plenty of explosions in George Miller‘s Oscar-winning action epic Mad Max: Fury Road, a new book details some of the major fireworks were between stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. 

The pair played, respectively, Max and Furiosa, who came to blows onscreen before ultimately teaming up to escape across the wasteland. However, their real-life relationship was no less volatile, according to New York Times columnist Kyle Buchanan‘s new book Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road.

According to excerpts from the U.K.’s Mirror, the pair clashed even before a frame was shot, and got into arguments so heated that a “threatened” Oscar winner Theron needed to be escorted at all times by a female producer on the project.

“It got to a place where it was kind of out of hand…I didn’t feel safe,” Theron says in the book. 

One exchange saw Theron, now 46, exploding about her 44-year-old co-star’s reported tardiness on set. “She jumps out of the War Rig, and she starts swearing her head off at him, saying, ‘Fine the f***ing c*** a hundred thousand dollars for every minute that he’s held up this crew,'” recalls cinematographer Mark Goellnicht.

“…[H]e charged up to her up and went, ‘What did you say to me?’ Goellnicht added.

Hardy seems to take the blame: “In hindsight, I was in over my head in many ways,” he admitted.

“The pressure on both of us was overwhelming at times. What she needed was a better, perhaps more experienced partner in me.”

The Venom series star added, “I’d like to think that now that I’m older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion.”