Getting down (under) and dirty: Mad Max Furiosa star Anya Taylor-Joy breaks her cover with Vogue
There’s a little bit of Australia that will be with Hollywood star Anya Taylor-Joy forever after her time filming the new Mad Max.
There’s a little bit of Australia that will be with Anya Taylor-Joy forever.
The actor, 28, fell in love with this country while filming Furiosa, the George Miller-directed fifth film in his epic Mad Max franchise, which hits cinemas around Australia on Thursday.
Production on Furiosa took place in NSW in 2022, in an abandoned mine in Kurnell, around the town of Hay and in the red desert of Broken Hill.
“I could not wait to get out to Broken Hill and see the red earth,” Taylor-Joy admitted.
“I actually took some. You know in Pirates of the Caribbean when he’s like, ‘I got a jar of dirt!’ I took a jar of dirt from Broken Hill and it stays in my house, with different little flowers I’d found, because I wanted a bit of Australia with me.”
Speaking to her Furiosa co-star Chris Hemsworth exclusively for the cover of Vogue Australia’s June issue, Taylor-Joy shared how she coped with the pressure of taking on the character of Furiosa, first portrayed by Charlize Theron in Miller’s 2015 thriller Mad Max: Fury Road, which has been hailed as one of the best films of the decade and was awarded six Oscars.
“I don’t know if you have this, but my brain doesn’t allow me to think about things that would potentially cause me to not do something, until it’s way too f..king late,” Taylor-Joy told Hemsworth. “And then you’re doing it, and it’s only afterwards that I’m like, ‘Oh no! This is big. And intense. And there’s a lot of expectation on it.’
“At your time, it just feels like your life, you don’t necessarily bring outside forces into it, but as soon as it’s over I have a full blown panic attack.”
“I’m the same,” Hemsworth responded. “I always find I get to the press tour and people start asking me questions, and I’m like, did I take it seriously enough? I think it’s self-preservation mode.”
Still, Taylor-Joy admitted to Hemsworth it was impossible not to take the character’s desperation home with her. “I have not chosen to be a method actor but … you don’t have a choice if they come home with you or not,” Taylor-Joy explained.
“Each of my characters has impacted me for the period of time I’m in. On this one, I remember having a conversation with my husband and he was like ‘I’ve never heard you so angry’.
And I was like, ‘Good! I am angry!’ That was her, almost, gift to me … From the moment I read the script on Furiosa, I knew it was going to be real time. I knew I would go through it and hopefully it would show up on screen.”
Vogue Australia’s June issue will be on sale on Monday, June 3
