Anya Taylor-Joy Doesn’t Have a License, But She Can Drive Cooler Than You
Mad Max Fury road came out nine years ago now and it’s still as fresh in my head as it was the day it came out. It left a mark on the action movie landscape that has never been surmounted. It was a massive achievement of practical effects and stunt work with a powerful performance between Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy.
Now it’s prequel is arriving to tell the story of Theron’s Furiosa, this time played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who has proven herself time and again to be a dynamic actor.
“The story is the saga of Furiosa, and how she gets taken from home, and spends the rest of her life trying to get back. [In] Fury Road, the story unfolds over three days and two nights. This film follows the story that runs directly into Fury Road, for 15 years,” Miller said in an interview with Empire. “It’s a different animal. It’s got many different locations. It’s an odyssey. No question.”
As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.
Taylor-Joy was obviously stoked with landing the role, and was able to do it with Theron’s blessing. “She’s been so classy and kind in letting me go and do it,” Taylor-Joy said. “But I feel very lucky that, from the second I read the script, I just knew this person. I felt so fiercely protective over Furiosa, and fiercely protective of her interests.”
She was so dedicated to the role she wanted to mirror Theron’s shaved look, but Miller forbade it.
George Miller is still in the directors chair and he’s helped by Nico Lathouris co-wrote the screenplay. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” was written at the same time as Fury Road alongside two sequel scripts. Theron saw this script begged them to make it first, but it wasn’t to be. It makes more sense to get her character built up beside one people are already invested in, even if in the end Max was still playing second fiddle in his own film.
You may think that Hemsworth is the new Max, but in fact he plays the Warlord Dementus, who’s role in Furiosa’s life we’ll leave out of this writeup.
After the first trailer dropped for Furiosa some fans were put off by what looks like an uptick in the use of CGI. The original had plenty of CGI, but not where it really counted. But one place where they’re definitely not faking things is with the actors.
At the Red Sea International Film Festival Competition, Hemsworth revealed that Miller hired a lot of guys who’d have more experience with road scuffles than you’d think. “a lot of the actors in the film were ex-criminals. One was a Hells Angel biker; people from very colourful, interesting, complicated lives.”
“[George] would interview these people and not get them to read a script, but instead to just tell a story about themselves. All of a sudden, there was such a truth there, that they had been seen for the first time. Someone hadn’t pushed them aside and said ‘Well, you’ve messed up, you’re finished’. They were given a second chance. There was a redemption quality to it.”
The team Miller built was ready to follow him through anything as a result. “On those long days – it’s raining or it’s really hot or whatever the complications on set are – they’re all right there ready to go, to follow him into battle. Thick or thin, they’re showing up.”
The team also includes other longtime collaborators: production designer Colin Gibson, editor Margaret Sixel, sound mixer Ben Osmo, costume designer Jenny Beavan and makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt, each of whom won an Oscar for their work on Mad Max: Fury Road.
Finishing production Taylor-Joy had felt like she was an entirely different planet. Talking to IndieWire she said “I think I need to sit down and attempt to try and digest what’s happened over the last seven months.”
Amusingly, her career hasn’t given her much time to settle in one place long enough to get a driver’s licence. But her time on Furiosa has given her a unique set of skills. “I don’t actually have a license, so I can’t drive. I can’t on a highway, I can’t parallel park, but if you need me to do a juicy 180 in a truck, I can do that and not hit the camera people, which is great”.
“That’s the other thing, if a driving instructor gets in a car with me, all I know how to do is crazy stunt driving”.
Many of us remember our first car, but for Taylor-Joy her first will be a bunch of spiked trucks designed by the Mad Max art department. Lucky.
