We Talked to Praetorian Jack, the Only Good Man in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
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Photograph: Jasin Boland; Collage: Gabe Conte
This interview contains spoilers for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
In Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the Wasteland is littered with bad men: There’s Immortan Joe, of course, plus a demented Chris Hemsworth in a fake nose and a sorcerer’s beard, and that one guy who’s like if a Dr. Bronner’s bottle were sentient and also profoundly evil.
Amidst all the depravity, director George Miller gives us exactly one good guy in the film: Praetorian Jack, played by Tom Burke. When we meet him, he’s in charge of driving the War Rig between the Citadel, Gas Town, and the Bullet Farm, doing the job that Furiosa comes to do in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. In Furiosa, he takes a young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) under his wing and promises to help her try to find the Green Place again. They forge an intimate connection, a brief expression of shared humanity, and she asks him to come along. The connection between the two of them is the heart of the movie, the one spot of light in a world that’s otherwise bereft of hope—until their escape is thwarted in a particularly heartbreaking manner, as we find out how Charlize Theron’s Furiosa in Fury Road ended up with that bionic arm.
Underneath a shock of black face paint and leather to rival the original Mad Max’s, Burke is virtually unrecognizable from his previous roles as the shady boyfriend in The Souvenir and Orson Welles in Mank. Back in London after a whirlwind Cannes premiere experience, he chatted with GQ about getting into Wasteland mode, filling out Praetorian Jack’s backstory, and the romantic connection between Jack and Furiosa.
GQ: How did it feel to be the only good guy in this movie?
Tom Burke: A responsibility, because I really felt like that lot had to land. But I felt part of a very good team with Anya, and of course both George [Miller] and [co-writer] Nico [Lathouris].
What was your relationship to the previous films, both Fury Road and the original Mad Maxes?
I loved all of them. I saw Thunderdome first. My friend had it on from Blockbuster halfway through, and it was the bit where all the guns were coming out. I was obsessed.
George Miller cast you after seeing you in The Souvenir. What about the role of Praetorian Jack appealed to you?
Well, I did a bit of Googling about what's going on out there. I remember seeing this paragraph that said there's one character who's apparently something of a mentor or something. I remember thinking, I suppose I've played slightly mentor-ish people before, and I like that archetype. It's a really nice archetype to play.
I thought, I'm not going to get that job, but wow, that sounds amazing. Cut to my manager saying, “George Miller wants to have a chat with you.” And I was like, “When? What's he seen? Souvenir?” I mean look, I'm proud of Souvenir, I'm proud of Mank, but I didn't know what kind of guy George Miller was. I should have known from seeing the films, but he wants to get the acting right. That's what he wants to get right. And I knew I could do the other stuff, too.
How did you prep to get into that different register?
I have a guy I've gone to before called Matthew Bamford. He's a really wonderful man. He's not just a trainer. He's helped me think about the physicality of character as well. We spoke to [stunt coordinator] Guy Norris and he explained the geography of the War Rig and the height and jumping in and out. So it was preparing my body for that kind of thing and making sure I could do that 30, 40 times.
We get a bit of Jack’s backstory in the film, but did George Miller give you any other information, or did you spin off one yourself?
He gave me more information and then he encouraged me to fill it out. I remember feeling a little bit like, Oh, God, I don't know where to begin. And I rang one of my old RADA teachers, Lloyd Trott, who had done a lot of this kind of thing when I was at RADA. He's got a very particular way of doing it where it's kind of like engaging your imagination rather than it feeling like an intellectual exercise. We had about three or four sessions and a lot came out from that that really helped.
And I asked George a lot of questions: Where do they sleep? Where do they eat? What do they eat? What happens when they're not doing this? Who do I know? How many times have I been in a room with Immortan Joe? What are the parameters of this character's world? And then we filled in a lot.
So what does Jack do in his free time when he’s not driving the War Rig?
I think there was a whole thing with the vermin in the Citadel—they sit around shooting at rats. It was that kind of thing.
Bleak!
It would be like, you were in a totalitarian state where everything is very ordered and you can't ever wander off and do your own thing. And that was why the whole triangular trick [driving from the Citadel to the Bullet Farm to Gas Town], even if it’s fraught with peril, is, in some ways, his happy space.
FURIOSA
When you were thinking of his backstory, was he someone who had thought about escaping before, or is it only once he meets Furiosa that it becomes a possibility?
I did think about that, but I think it's more interesting if it's Furiosa who gives him that sense of possibility, because he really is of the mindset that there's nothing out there. And even when he says, “I want to help you find this place,” which he's originally referred to as a mirage, it was interesting how much he really believes it's there or doesn't and how much he’s in love with the idea of it.
He has a very distinct style—the black makeup, which we see Furiosa adapting, but even the black leathers. Were those meant to be a nod to the original Mad Max?
Yes, except there was a whole sketch of a costume that arrived when I got the script. It was something very different. By the time I turned up with the fitting, they'd started thinking that's what they wanted to do. It was that shape and then it was with the shoulder thing, which is, I guess it is a real nod to that.
What did it look like before?
It was less of it. It was more of a jerkin without arms and there was a lot more chest on show. It didn't, to me, say somebody who's trying to be discreet. It was quite a show, you know what I mean? A lot of it became about, what are all the things you would want on you just in case?
As you were reading the script, did you ever have any hope it was going to end well for him? Or did you kind of know he was going to be doomed from the start?
I actually never read the words, “He's dead and she sees his dead lifeless corpse.” And eventually, it was about a week, I said, “George, I'm dead, aren't I?” He's like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.” Because I thought, You never know, I could come back. He might not have any face left, but a lot of people in the Wasteland are like that.
Anya Taylor-Joy gave an interview where she said she never felt more alone when filming Furiosa. What was your experience with that?
Well, all my scenes were with Anya. And I like to think she felt a little less alone in those scenes. I do think, and she's alluded to this herself, that a lot of what she felt was, in some way or other, the journey of that character. And I believe that when Anya says it because Anya lives what she's doing. She's the best version of a Method actress in that way because she still wants to be affected by her environment.
She doesn't disappear off between takes and she doesn't need everyone to call her Furiosa. She's in the room with you. But then, action. And so I'm not surprised. Your body doesn't know you're lying when you're acting if you're doing it properly. Your mind does, because otherwise, you're nuts, but your body doesn't know and you have to give space for that. You have to be aware of that. Look after yourself.
FURIOSA
What was the most memorable day of filming for you?
I love that scene where Anya says, “Come with me.”
And you get hints of a romantic connection between the two of them, but it’s more than that.
Well, I think one of the interesting things you start talking about is, what would they even be available to at the beginning of it? They both would probably be quite asexual. Can you imagine growing up in that environment? I mean, can you imagine why that leaves you? I think it’s nicely ambiguous when you see them see each other and you think, Well, what are they feeling? It could be so many things. And I like the idea that that doesn't become a what-if until their whole horizon changes. And they're like, We're going off into something very new, and maybe this changes everything and maybe there's a possibility of something now that wasn't there before, which is more romantic in a way.
You’ve worked in the register of Souvenir or Mank, and now you've done this big action movie. Which do you feel most suited for?
Rather than thinking of it in terms of the genre or the scale of it, I remember when Souvenir came out, I knew I didn't want to go anywhere near somebody playing somebody like Anthony again for a while. And then I did True Things and it was hard. I convinced myself because it was in some ways a completely different character. But I remember we were doing the moment where just they've made love by the lake and she goes to touch him and he pulls away. And I remember just thinking, Oh, man, this guy, and I've got however many more weeks of this. It's nicer to play people who are forming genuine connections with other people. It just is, whether that's in an action movie or a somber drama.
So apocalypse wasteland over another toxic guy.
Oh no. I was really relieved I was playing a nice guy in Furiosa, somebody that was kind of swimming up towards the light.
What’s your apocalypse plan?
Apocalypse or no apocalypse, I have this thing. I want to be high up in the mountains. I don't know why, it's just something I want to do. I don't want to be on the top of some snow peaks thing, but I just have this thing I'd like to be high up somewhere. And I'm always trying to find which mountain there is, because they're kind of there in my head, and I haven't quite worked out where they are geographically yet.
Originally Appeared on GQ
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