By now you’ve seen the footage of Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy looking both badass and a bit unusual in George Miller’s upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road prequel film. It’s Hemsworth who’s completely unrecognizable in the Furiosa trailer, and it’s not just that he’s completely different-looking for fans either. Even people who worked closely with the two leads on set have trouble reconciling the characters with the real-life people inhabiting them.
Recently, George Miller popped onstage with Taylor Joy and Hemsworth, who were both very clean and very well-dressed onstage. He told the audience during the Warner Bros. 2024 CinemaCon panel that he’d “spent a year in the cutting room” looking at the two actors as their characters. Now seeing them all fresh-faced, and in Hemsworth’s case well-shaven, he was having trouble even equating them as the same people, joking:
They’re complete frauds to me.
The Furiosa cast may look very different onscreen than they do in their regular lives, but Miller also told the audience that it was hard to find the right cast for the film. After all, he had to find someone who resembled Charlize Theron and could take on the characteristics of Charlize whilst still making the role her own.
Anya needed to be someone whom you could spend all those months in the wasteland with. Someone who is really resolute, someone who is disciplined and very very smart. … the rigor and the discipline and the thinking on the feet.
Believe it or not, finding Hemsworth was even harder, as Miller was looking for a funny guy (noting “that’s kind of key”) but also someone who could play a character with a lot of depth and who could do different things. The director said finding the right person was what held up this movie for years, noting the team “had the script for a long time and we really couldn’t think of an actor to do it.” Then they honed in on the Aussie star.
Look, it comes down to the script initially, the conversation that George and I had had the first time I read the script years before we started shooting… in order for him to lead this horde of bikers, this tribe of nomadic individuals, across the wasteland, and inspire some hope and positivity, there needed to be an element of charisma.
He had the charisma in spades, but Miller said it was really the "dimensions" the actor presented when they met in person that landed him the role. Once that was settled, they gave him the Mad Max look with prosthetics and more. And that look is the look that Miller saw over and over again for well over a year. The real Chris may as well not have existed.
It's too early to tell if Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will make the list of best action movies of all time, but we don't have too much longer to wait to find out. The movie will hit the 2024 release schedule on May 24th.
