Anya-Taylor Joy has revealed that she never felt “more alone” than during filming for her latest film, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
The Queen’s Gambit star plays Furiosa, who was previously played by Charlize Theron, in the prequel to George Miller’s 2015 offering Mad Max: Fury Road.Although aware that filming would be difficult, the actress hinted that she experienced even greater challenges than Theron did on set.
She told the New York Times: “I wanted to be changed. I wanted to be put in a situation in extremis where I would have no choice but to grow. And I got it.
“I’ve never been more alone than making that movie. I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”
When asked specifically what caused her to feel this way, she responded cryptically: “Next question, sorry. Talk to me in 20 years. Talk to me in 20 years.”
While prefacing her remarks by saying she adored Miller, the film star elaborated that the director had a “very, very strict idea of what Furiosa’s war face looked like”, which posed a challenge for her performance, requiring her to convey emotions primarily through her eyes.
The actress went on to explain that she pleaded with Miller for three months to allow her character to have an emotional outburst before he relented.
She added: “I am a really strong advocate of female rage. We’re animals, and there’s a point where somebody just snaps.
“There’s one scream in that movie, and I am not joking when I tell you that I fought for that scream for three months.”
Interestingly, Theron shared a similar encounter during the making of Fury Road, where she approached Miller and demanded Furiosa to have a cathartic release.
Hinting further at her challenging journey, Taylor-Joy admitted she didn’t know if she’d be able to watch the movie again, revealing that she started “sobbing” within “two minutes” of viewing an early cut of the project.”
But while there are clear similarities between Theron and Taylor-Joy’s experiences on set, the Menu star fortunately had a better connection with her co-star Chris Hemsworth than Charlize did with Tom Hardy.
Speaking to Access Hollywood, she said of Hemsworth: "He’s just the most wonderful, kind-hearted, big-hearted individual. We have a lot of fun. [I’m] very lucky.
“Making this film wanting to kill your co-star would be really difficult.”
