Whether you like 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road or not, you can’t deny the action dystopia from director George Miller has made an impact in the movie world. The production earned 10 nominations at the Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and a lot of that is due to Charlize Theron’s talent playing lead character Imperator Furiosa. On screen, her journey through the wasteland was a thrilling ride to watch, but the actor revealed in an interview to The Hollywood Reporter that production was far from paradise.
It’s pretty easy to imagine how tiring the filming of Mad Max: Fury Road was – the movie takes place in the middle of the desert, and the cast and crew shot on location under the Namibian sun. The special effects of the movie were also primarily practical – meaning that it took a lot more hours in the day to make everything you see on screen happen on cue. Theron – who shaved her head to play the lead role – reveals this was her most demanding project.
“Listen, I know I said, ‘Oh, as an actor, you want to be challenged,’ but you don’t want it to be that bad. It was a long, long shoot. I have never done anything that needed that kind of endurance, and I don’t think I ever will [again]. I don’t know what production on the prequel was like, but I want to believe it was less. And I hate saying this because I don’t ever want to encourage young actors or storytellers to believe that they need trauma or sacrifice because I really, really don’t believe you do, but there’s a little bit about the circumstances around that movie that I think gave it the magic. It doesn’t mean it has to always be that, but I do think somehow the lightning in a bottle that you’re always trying to catch happened on that movie. But, man, it was fucking tough.”
Charlize Theron Reveals If She Would Return to the Mad Max World and Her Thoughts on Furiosa
Even though she had some choice words to describe production, Theron underscores that the impressions she had during filming changed when she got to see the finished movie, and if she were to return she’d be a lot more aware of Miller’s endgame:
“I never really truly appreciated or respected George Miller’s vision until I saw [the completed film and] went, ‘Oh my God, this is what was in his head the whole time and I couldn’t hear it.’”
The sequel to Mad Max: Fury Road was announced shortly after the first movie (or fourth, depending on how you look at it) became a hit, but production evolved at a snail’s pace. The sequel became a prequel, which meant we’d get a younger Furiosa who is played by Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit). In the same interview, Theron stated she’s hardly mad that production went a different way, and that her substitute is “one of the greatest fucking actresses" working now.
Mad Max: Fury Road won over 200 awards in different cinema events, and it frequently makes lists of best action movies of the 21st century. Furiosa is expected to premiere on May 24, 2024.
You can remember all the V8-induced craze from Mad Max: Fury Road by watching the trailer below: