Inside Charlize Theron’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Drive-In Screening

Marc Malkin
·3 min read

Charlize Theron hosted a drive-in screening of “Mad Max: Fury Road” on Friday night in Los Angeles.

The festivities, which served as a fundraiser for the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, took place on top of the parking structure at the Grove mall.

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Here, Variety goes inside the event for a look at how Theron and her team pulled off a red carpet event during the pandemic.

Say Cheese: There was no customary arrivals line with a branded step-and-repeat and photographers screaming and clamoring for photos. Instead, one single shutterbug was on hand to capture guests in their cars as they drove onto a large piece of red carpet. “Get as close as you can to the window,” he said. There was also a video station to recreate an eight-second green-screen sequence from the movie. Attendants then directed everyone to their socially-distanced parking spots — there was way more than six feet between each vehicle — and instructed everyone to stay inside, turn their headlights off and tune into 89.1 FM for the night’s audio. Guests — there were 90 cars and tickets were $1,000 for two people — were not allowed to mingle.

Eat Up: Upon check-in, guests also received a tote bag with popcorn, bottles of Icelandic Glacial Water, a bag of Sour Patch Kids and a bottle of hand sanitizer from Caruso (the owner of the Grove). Another tote included cans of alcohol-free Heineken 0.0. Prepackaged dinners from Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill and Edoardo Baldi were boxed, bagged and delivered to each car. The day before the screening, guests received a hand-delivered box, also Heinekens as well as a four-pack of Absolut Berry Vodkaritas, bottles of Dior’s j’adore perfume, iS Clinical hand sanitizer, BeautyCounter All Bright C Serum and navy blue cloth face masks.

Night Falls: As the sun went down, motorcycle stunt drivers revved up the crowd by doing wheelies and donuts as the evening’s emcee Aisha Tyler came on stage to welcome everyone and introduce Theron, who was dressed casually in white Dior jeans, white Rothy’s sneakers and a black T-shirt emblazoned with “We Should All Be Feminists” in gold letters. “That woman over there is my lover, I just want the world to know,” the Oscar winner joked about Tyler before adding that she is also lovers with her “Mad Max” co-star Nicholas Hoult. Audience clapping was replaced by car-honking.

Shop Talk: In a Q&A moderated by Kyle Buchanan of The New York Times before the movie began, Theron admitted she was “scared s—less” for the nine months it took to shoot the film. She revealed that the first cut she saw from director George Miller was four hours. “I never got bored,” she said.

Hoult recalled filming a fight scene with Theron inside the tractor of a truck. “I knew I really arrived as an actor when there was a scene when you spat in my face,” Hoult said to Theron. “I think I asked politely, ‘Do you mind if I spit back?’”

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