It’s so cool being in the world of Mad Max
RACHAEL DAVIS SITS DOWN WITH FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA STARS ANYA TAYLOR-JOY AND CHRIS HEMSWORTH AND
DIRECTOR GEORGE MILLER
WHEN George Miller was making Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015 – hailed as one of the greatest action movies of all time – he spent a lot of pre-production developing the backstories of his characters.
Fury Road is a thrill ride from start to finish, which means there isn’t much space for lengthy character exposition and world-building. But, the director says, when the time came to make his latest film in the Mad Max franchise – prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – this preparation work meant the story of the heroine was already mapped out.
“It was great to be able to go back into that world and realise it a little bit more fully,” says the Australian filmmaker, 79.
“When we told the story of Fury Road, all the exposition had to be on the run, so in order to tell that story, we wrote the story of Furiosa. And we had to understand all the circumstances, how everything in that world came to be.
“To be able to go back into that world and fill it out a little bit more was very interesting... there’s a lot of accumulated knowledge, as it were, from making Fury Road, and that found its way into the movie.
“But I think the core of any story, and particularly this one, is what happens with the characters, what the conflicts of the story reveal about the essence of the characters, all of them, but particularly Furiosa – how she became the Imperator Furiosa, the road warrior, that she is, and how, in particular, those people like Dementus forged her.”
Anya TaylorJoy, known for roles in The Queen’s Gambit, Last Night In Soho and The Menu, plays the role of Furiosa, from her young adulthood to where Charlize Theron’s portrayal picks up the story in Fury Road.
In this movie, we first meet the titular protagonist as a child – played by Alyla Browne – and watch as she is snatched from her home, the Green Place, and falls into a Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth. We follow her as she traverses the Wasteland, through locations such as the Citadel, Gas Town and the Bullet Farm, trying to find her way home.
“She is incredibly singleminded.
When she sets her mind to something, she will do whatever it takes to achieve it,” says Anya, 28, of Furiosa.
“That begins very early on... Sometimes, I would think, if she hadn’t been taken from the Green Place, what would have happened? She probably would have lived a pretty happy life and would have been fine. This is not something she signed up for. She was stolen.
“And from the moment that she understands that kindness in the Wasteland is something that is not forgivable, she makes that promise to her mother... ‘No matter how long it takes, no matter what you have to do, get back to the
Green Place’.
“What is fascinating about the story that George has crafted is that once she sees that becoming less and less likely, it opens this entire can of worms – she now has no place to put that determination and that energy. And once that happens, all of that turns on Dementus. She puts all of her pain, all of her loss, everything, on this one individual.”
Dementus, who George describes as “a warlord who basically falls into the pattern of a lot of historical characters across many cultures, the people who marauded across a great vast land, absorbing all its resources, including its human resources, in order to conquer many civilisations”, is played by Australian actor Chris
Hemsworth, best known as Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Chris says he loved “the big swing I was able to take” with the role of Dementus, the “opportunity to play a villain but try and sprinkle in some humanity in there”.
“He is a bombastic, flamboyant, unhinged character that allowed for the wicked sort of sense of humour, but also this kind of darkness and brutality there,” adds the 40-yearold actor.
“The History Man is another character in the film, constantly in his ear, telling him stories about emperors, and conquerors, and marauders, and individuals through history that have amassed large amounts of followers. He was mimicking all of those people.
“There was a rock star, cult leader, sideshow circus entertainer quality to him, which George and I discussed and [I] really just kind of lent into the absurdity of him.”
Anya had a unique challenge when portraying Furiosa: the character has very little dialogue, in part because she spends much of her time being mute to avoid being detected as a woman among the ranks of men as she plots her escape.
“I never minded Furiosa not talking very much, because that seemed part of the character to me...” she says.
“I essentially had body language, my eyes, and potentially breathing, in order to be able to convey something. And that opened up a whole other universe of acting for me... I had to be inventive about how to tell this story.
“It also made the big moments so liberating, and that really fitted in with the character as well. If you think about it, she has very little agency for most of the movie... When she does get agency, I felt that liberation, too.”
Part of what makes Fury Road such a thrilling action film is the post-apocalyptic Wasteland it is set in, a vast desert where water and petrol are scarce commodities. Furiosa expands upon that world, showing viewers previously unseen locations and building upon the lore of the 2015 film.
“It’s so cool, it’s so immersive,” says Hemsworth of being in the world of Mad Max.
“When I first wanted to be an actor, (it) was not to act as such, it was because I wanted to be those characters, I wanted to live in that world, I wanted to be taken on an adventure. And when you come to a set that lives and breathes with such detail, and you’re in real environments, and those environments are characters in themselves, your imagination just runs wild and is stimulated.
“For me, acting is about continually staying in touch with the childlike wonder and ability to dream up characters and circumstances. And these sets and these costumes immediately put you in that space.”
I never minded Furiosa not talking very much... that seemed part of the character to me Anya Taylor-Joy
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga comes to UK cinemas on Friday