After Charlize Theron Opened Up About Feeling Threatened And Unsafe When Filming “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Anya Taylor-Joy Has Concerned Fans With “Cryptic” Comments About Her Experience Filming The Prequel
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When Mad Max: Fury Road was released in 2015, it was pretty well-documented that it had been an incredibly difficult production process for most people involved.
In 2022, Charlize Theron revealed that she felt so threatened by her costar Tom Hardy on set that she required protection. She also claimed that producers forgave his “really bad behavior” because he was a man.
In Kyle Buchanan’s tell-all book Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road, more than 150 people who were involved in the almost-two-decade making of the movie didn’t hold back as they recounted their grueling days in the desert.
In the book, Charlize admits that she “didn’t feel safe” and requested a woman producer be drafted in to help “equalize” the tension during filming. However, when Denise Di Novi was hired, director George Miller barred her from the set — which Charlize said left her feeling “pretty naked and alone.”
Tom denied that Charlize ever felt threatened by him, saying: “She’s a very serious actor. So, I don’t see why she would ever be intimidated by me or in any way feel frightened. I think that was more bollocks,” however, other stars from the movie verified that there was a bad atmosphere on set.
In 2017, Zoë Kravitz also pointed out that the tension may have been exacerbated by the environment that they spent six months filming in, explaining: “[We were] also in the desert for so long, I think everyone was tired, and confused, and homesick. We saw nothing but sand for six months; you go crazy.”
Despite the behind-the-scenes drama, Mad Max: Fury Road was a huge success and received 10 Academy Award nominations — and its highly-anticipated prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, is due for release later this month.
While neither Charlize nor Tom were involved in the new movie, its star Anya Taylor-Joy seemingly found the entire filming experience just as tough.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Anya repeatedly referenced how difficult the shoot had been for her, even admitting that when it wrapped in 2022, she knew she was “going to need the two years that it took for the movie to come out to deal with it.”
Interviewed by the same journalist who had written the tell-all book, Anya added: “I’ve never been more alone than making that movie. I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”
Buchanan writes: “Sensing that she was skirting a sensitive issue, I asked Taylor-Joy what exactly it was about Furiosa that had proved more difficult than she expected. For five long seconds, she contemplated giving me an answer. ‘Next question, sorry,’ she said.”
“There was a faraway look in her eyes, as if a part of her had been left behind in that wasteland,” he goes on, before quoting Anya telling him: “Talk to me in 20 years. Talk to me in 20 years.”
One of Anya’s fans shared a screenshot of this excerpt to X, formerly known as Twitter, as they wrote: “anya never said anything like this before... what exactly happened on that set damn.”
anya never said anything like this before... what exactly happened on that set damn pic.twitter.com/UG1RAXHWdI
— ً (@bloodanya) May 12, 2024
New York Times / Via nytimes.com
The tweet immediately caused a stir, with many others expressing their intrigue over Anya's comments. One popular quote-tweet simply reads: “:( who hurt her…”
“I hope she’s okay. Very cryptic, but I guess I understand why she feels like she can’t talk about it now,” somebody else replied.
Another user wrote: “This is deeply concerning, especially considering what Charlize's experience on that set was.”
While Anya did not explicitly reveal what she struggled with on set, she did say that “months” went by without her speaking a single line during filming.
Addressing the limits that Mad Max’s director put on her performance, she explained: “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.”
“But he had a very, very strict idea of what [Anya’s character] 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,” Anya added.
Defending his direction, George told the publication: “When you’ve got someone with a lot going on and they’re silent, the audience is getting ahold of a lot of stuff. It’s that thing that you can really only do in cinema.”
And while Anya understood his point, and reportedly made it clear during her interview that she always wanted to make sure that George felt respected during production, she shared: “I am a really strong advocate of female rage. We’re animals, and there’s a point where somebody just snaps. 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.”
Anya went on to reveal that she even ended up breaking down in tears as she tried to plead her case with her director.
George apparently reacted by telling her: “You care so much, it’s beautiful.”
Interestingly, Charlize previously recalled a similar experience during filming for Fury Road, saying that she approached George and demanded her character have a cathartic outburst.
This ultimately led to Charlize improvising a scene in which she drops to her knees and lets out a primal scream — something that is widely considered to be one of the standout moments in the movie.
But while there are clear similarities between Charlize and Anya’s experiences, Anya thankfully appeared to have a better connection with her costar Chris Hemsworth than Charlize did with Tom.
Speaking to Access Hollywood, she said of the Australian actor: "He’s just the most wonderful, kindhearted, big-hearted individual. We have a lot of fun. [I’m] very lucky."
Anya also acknowledged: “Making this film wanting to kill your costar would be really difficult.”
Alluding some more to her arduous experience, Anya concluded her New York Times interview by saying that once she has seen the movie, she isn’t sure if she will “ever be able to watch it again,” adding that she started “sobbing” within “two minutes” of viewing an early cut of the project.
“I will never regret this experience, on so many different levels, but it’s a very particular story to have,” Anya explained. “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.’”
Referencing Charlize directly, she added: “We are due a sit-down, hash-it-out dinner.”
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