Actor Tom Hardy has flipped the script and surprised hip-hop fans with his lyrical skills on his debut rap album under the alias Frankie Pulitzer. The project, Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer, has everyone asking, who knew Bane had bars?
On Aug. 28, 2026, Hardy delivered his collaborative project with hip-hop supergroup Czarface—consisting of rap/production duo 7L & Esoteric and Wu-Tang Clan member Inspectah Deck—called Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer. The 15-track collection is not a vanity project for the 48-year-old thespian; it’s a real hip-hop album with Hardy as Frankie, spitting gritty bars and rewindable punchlines over some head-nodding, boom-bap production.
However, fans have been reacting to Hardy’s bars and masked-up appearance as Frankie in the video for “Mad Technology” featuring features Method Man. In the visual, which you can view below, Frankie wears a black jacket and rocks a black-and-white zig-zag face mask (or balaclava) that covers his face. Over a downing piano-groove, Hardy makes an explicit nod to Kathy Bates of the 1990 flick Misery as he spits, “You sh*t for brains, no name lame, that bites like Cujo/I’d rather masturbate to Kathy Bates than hear you flow/And you know, that misery, it loves company.”
As for the mask, Hardy leans into his disguised imagery on the Czarface project by invoking his iconic role of Batman’s brawny nemesis Bane. On the haunting “Grim-Visaged War,” Hardy channels his signature Bane vocals to deliver the “winter of our discontent” monologue from William Shakespeare’s history play Richard III, showing that his masked villain persona is never too far away.
While Hardy’s appearance with Czarface may have surprised some people, this isn’t the first time Hardy has collaborated with the group. In 2021, the actor made his debut appearance as Frankie Pulitzer on Czarface’s Good Guys, Bad Guys EP. Then in 2024 he teamed up with Method Man on Czarface’s song “Knull & Void.”
