Mad Max: Fury Road was one of the surprise breakout hits of 2015 and one of the best action movies ever made in the past 10 years. The Oscar-nominated film featured an A-list cast with Tom Hardy as Max and Charlize Theron as Furiosa. The film has found great success, but according to Theron, the filming process was anything but easy.
In an interview with WSJ Magazine, Charlize Theron revealed that she and co-star Tom Hardy would frequently butt heads during production.
From what I hear, he’s not like that on every movie—I hear he’s had good experiences. Maybe the movie is what it is because we struggled so much with each other, and those characters had to struggle so much with each other. If we were chum-chum, maybe the movie would have been 10 times worse.
They don’t call him Mad Max for his sunny disposition! From the sounds of it, this movie was a particularly brutal production. They filmed in Australia but had to relocate to South Africa after flooding. Imagine being on the set in the Australia desert with the wind and dust in your eyes, and the sun beaming down on you, and then having to deliver you lines. Not to mention how long it probably took to do the practical stunt work. There also wasn’t a finished script (which you can tell in the movie. The plot is pretty much just driving back and forth on one road), which can’t be a comfortable feeling for an actor. All that added together it’s easy to see how Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy wouldn’t get along. I can only guess how stressed director George Miller must have been.
It’s nice to see that Charlize Theron credits their off-screen relationship to their on-screen one. Max and Furiosa really only got along because of a necessity, which is basically the same situation the two actors were in.
From a fan perspective, I’m kind of glad that the production was so difficult. It means that they weren’t doing anything the easy way and that they really had to earn their success. It obviously paid off for them, but it goes to show that the difficulty of a production doesn’t necessarily result in a bad film.
I loved Charlize Theron’s character Furiosa but I think my favorite character in the movie will always be the Doof Warrior. There’s just something about a guy who’s sole job is to wail on a flamethrower guitar that’s really appealing to me.
See my point?
You can next see Charlize Theron in The Huntsman: Winter’s War, which opens in theaters April 22, 2016.
