‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Star Nicholas Hoult Knew He’d Made it as an Actor When Charlize Theron Spat in His Face
Five years later “Mad Max: Fury Road” is the gift that keeps on giving. With a Furiosa spinoff prequel on the way and continued play in best-of-the-decade lists, George Miller’s Oscar-winning 2015 action epic has stayed firmly in the cultural imagination. The film was toasted once again Friday night at a special drive-in screening in Los Angeles, with Kyle Buchanan of The New York Times moderating a Q&A with stars Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult.
As reported by Variety, Hoult recalled filming one challenging fight scene alongside Theron inside of a tractor. “I knew I really arrived as an actor when there was a scene when you spat in my face,” Hoult told Theron. “I think I asked politely, ‘Do you mind if I spit back?’”
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Talk about a spit take! That kind of intense camaraderie on the set was also evident in an on-set feuding between Theron and co-star Tom Hardy. Stunt performer Dayna Grant recently opened up about the film’s “challenging” atmosphere and the actors’ rivalry during filming. Grant revealed that the Theron-Hardy feud was obvious from the earliest stages of the production, forcing a separation in how the action scenes were choreographed.
“We knew right from the get go,” Grant said. “We knew from the beginning that it was happening when we were doing the fight choreography…there was tension then. So we were told what was going on. And we were just told to try and make it work as much as possible, which was challenging, because usually you’re all in one big group and working together whereas we were kind of separated.”
Theron took some ownership for the feud during an interview with The New York Times published back in May, saying, “I didn’t have enough empathy to really, truly understand what he must have felt like to step into Mel Gibson’s shoes. That is frightening! And I think because of my own fear, we were putting up walls to protect ourselves instead of saying to each other, ‘This is scary for you, and it’s scary for me, too. Let’s be nice to each other.’ In a weird way, we were functioning like our characters: Everything was about survival.”
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