Anya Taylor-Joy may play a vengeful warrior in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” but the actress also had to battle her way a bit creatively while on set for the sprawling epic.
Taylor-Joy told The New York Times that she had to fight to have her title character unleash a scream in the feature, helmed by George Miller.
“We’re animals, and there’s a point where somebody just snaps,” Taylor-Joy said. “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. I am a really strong advocate of female rage.”
Taylor-Joy explained how the character of Furiosa felt “real” to her, and almost like a friend she needed to protect. “I defend, to a fault, their interest,” she said of all of her roles, especially in the “Mad Max: Fury Road” prequel.
“With George, it’s a long game,” Taylor-Joy added of the collaborative process to bring the younger version of Furiosa to life. “You plant the seed day one, you leave it for a bit, then you check on it.”
As reported in the New York Times interview, Taylor-Joy started to cry when debating a character choice with Miller. “He was like, ‘You care so much, it’s beautiful,’” Taylor-Joy recalled. “And I was like, ‘I’m trying to tell you something!’”
The star added, “I wanted to make sure that I was never insolent in any way, that it was always a conversation. At the end of the day, this is his vision. I can present everything that I have, but his word goes.”
Taylor-Joy pointed to Miller’s “very, very strict” vision for Furiosa. She also revealed she didn’t speak for “months” on “Furiosa” due to only having 30 lines of dialogue.
“I do want to 100 percent preface this by saying I love George and if you’re going to do something like this, you want to be in the hands of someone like George Miller,” Taylor-Joy said. “But he had a very, very strict idea of what Furiosa’s war face looked like, and that only allowed me my eyes for a large portion of the movie. It was very much ‘mouth closed, no emotion, speak with your eyes.’ That’s it, that’s all you have. I will never regret this experience, on so many different levels, but it’s a very particular story to have. There’s not everyone in the world that has made a ‘Mad Max’ movie, and I swear to God, everyone that I’ve met that has, there’s a look in our eyes: We know. There’s an immediate kinship of like, ‘OK, hey, I see you.’”
But despite starring in “Furiosa,” Taylor-Joy couldn’t watch the first three minutes without bursting into tears. The actress detailed her visceral reaction to watching an early cut of the feature during a Variety cover story. “Within the first three minutes, I’m crying, and afterward, I cannot speak,” Taylor-Joy said. “I found it very traumatizing to watch.”
Of course, first reactions to the feature have heralded both Taylor-Joy’s and co-star Chris Hemsworth’s respective performances as being grounded measures for the elevated sci-fi drama.
Taylor-Joy even explained how she approached the role that had minimal dialogue, instead opting to express Furiosa’s emotions through facial movements.
“Furiosa doesn’t talk much,” Taylor-Joy said. “She’s a pretty silent character. I hope that’s part of the reason George chose me. Until I was doing ‘Furiosa,’ I didn’t quite realize that’s been a lot of my career — a lot of my career has played out in my eyes.”
She added of when Furiosa does finally speak — or scream — it comes at a cost. “When she opens her mouth,” Taylor-Joy said, “it’s rusty in there.”
