Anya Taylor-Joy had a difficult time emotionally while filming George Miller’s forthcoming Mad Max spinoff, Furiosa.
“I’ve never been more alone than making that movie,” Taylor-Joy, 28, told the New York Times about the intense experience. “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”
Taylor-Joy expressed relief to have some time between the movie wrapping production in November 2022 and her doing press before the film hits theaters on May 24.
“Like, I knew I was going to need the two years that it took for the movie to come out to deal with it,” she continued. When asked to elaborate on the difficulty she experienced on set, Taylor-Joy replied, “Talk to me in 20 years.”
Taylor-Joy had her share of obstacles bringing Furiosa to life. The character was introduced on the big screen in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, which was also directed by Miller, 79, and portrayed by Charlize Theron. Furiosa serves as a prequel and origin story of the Imperator.
“I do want to 100 percent preface this by saying I love George and if you’re going to do something like this, you want to be in the hands of someone like George Miller,” Taylor-Joy said. “But he had a very, very strict idea of what Furiosa’s war face looked like, and that only allowed me my eyes for a large portion of the movie. It was very much ‘mouth closed, no emotion, speak with your eyes’. That’s it, that’s all you have.”
Taylor-Joy reportedly only has 30 lines of dialogue throughout the 2-hour and 28-minute runtime of the film, which follows a similar vibe to Fury Road. Miller explained to The Telegraph that a lot of dialogue slows down a movie meant to be “enjoyed at high speed.”
However, Taylor-Joy wasn’t in full alignment with Furiosa’s impassiveness, noting to NYT she’s a “strong advocate of female rage.”
“We’re animals, and there’s a point where somebody just snaps,” she explained. “There’s one scream in that movie, and I am not joking when I tell you that I fought for that scream for three months.”
Taylor-Joy assured that all disagreements on set were resolved amicably while acknowledging that the director typically has the final say.
“I wanted to make sure that I was never insolent in any way, that it was always a conversation,” Taylor-Joy continued. “At the end of the day, this is his vision. I can present everything that I have, but his word goes.”
While the actress doesn’t “regret” starring in the movie, and she feels like she “changed” and grew during the intense filming process.
“There’s not everyone in the world that has made a Mad Max movie, and I swear to God, everyone that I’ve met that has, there’s a look in our eyes: We know. There’s an immediate kinship of like, ‘OK, hey, I see you.’”
