George Miller knows exactly when Anya Taylor-Joy became Furiosa (2024)

George Miller is back in the Wasteland for the stunning prequel movie Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which again saw the Australian filmmaker push the boundaries of action sequences.

If you've heard anything about Furiosa's set pieces, it's that there's one 15-minute sequence which took 78 days to film across three months. But this is far from the only sequence in Furiosa that'll leave you wondering just how the hell Miller did it.

Even the Furiosa cast were as astonished as we are. "I don't know how George does what he does and is the man he is, that's the thing," Tom Burke – who plays Praetorian Jack – tells Digital Spy.

"Just imagine something on this scale and you imagine somebody kind of incredibly tempestuous and irascible because of what the film is. He's this very complete human being. He's very calm, he's very conscious, he's very nurturing. He's just a delight to be around. You have to be George to make it, you have to be that calm."

But one thing you will be sure of is that Miller chose perfectly for the younger Furiosa, with Anya Taylor-Joy stepping into the formidable shoes of Charlize Theron to tell the story of Furiosa before Mad Max: Fury Road.

To mark Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga's release in cinemas, Digital Spy sat down with George Miller to talk about just when he knew Anya Taylor-Joy was Furiosa, tweaks to the original script, the future of the saga and more.

You've spoken a lot about having this screenplay around the time of Fury Road for the backstory for the cast on that film. So, when it came to making Furiosa, did you have to make many tweaks to that screenplay?

George Miller: The essential story was there, but then as we revisited it and we started to design it, new things came out of it, things that weren't already designed for Fury Road. But most of all, when the actors got involved – not just Anya and Chris, but all of the actors got involved – the characters grew.

Through the rehearsals and preparation which was quite long and intense, as we were shooting, building up to their relationship, some things ended up in ways that I didn't predict from the screenplay.

It basically was handed over to the actors and they made something of it that I didn't expect and I must say, I was really, really happy to see what they did. It became theirs in a way, they owned the characters.

Along those lines, with Anya, did you allow her that freedom to find this Furiosa? We knew where she would end up, but you allowed her the freedom to create that journey.

Yes, because when you cast someone, it's purely intuitive. It's like a hunch. You make it your job to find out what their approach to acting is and what formed them as human beings and actors.

You hope that all comes together in the work and the character emerges, but you don't know until you're there on the set watching it on the monitor and you start to see, 'Oh that's happening'.

Finally, when you get in the cutting room, you see them and then it gets to the point where you don't remember the shoot so much, but you really believe that they are the characters out there in the Wasteland.

It's a weird moment when you see them again, like doing these press tours, and they're completely different and you say, 'Wait a minute, that's not Furiosa, that's not Dementus'.

We'd hang out with Furiosa, less so Dementus, not sure we'd go to the pub with Dementus.

Well, it'd be entertaining. Like a lot of these warlords or leaders or despots, there's a certain pageantry or showbiz to them and I think that's where they get their charisma from.

That's been right through history and we see it today in a lot of the characters that we see on the world stage, that same thing. So he's entertaining, but I wouldn't hang out with him, particularly in the Wasteland.

You mentioned not knowing if the casting would work until you saw it. Is there a particular moment when you saw Anya, or a sequence she was in, where you were like, 'This is going to work'?

I remember, quite early on at the beginning of the movie, we shot a sequence with Anya out of Broken Hill where a lot of this was shot. It's at the end of that Stowaway sequence, as we call it, she basically has to have a crash course in becoming a warrior.

She's stowing away but she's got no choice but to join in the battle, and finally is the last man or woman standing along with Praetorian Jack. She gets thrown out of the war rig and she's there by herself in a rage that she's failed.

I remember shooting that day and I remember going up to Anya and I said to her, 'You're not Anya anymore to me, you're Furiosa'. That was the day I saw her as Furiosa and that was quite early in the shoot and that feeling was amplified all the way through to when we finally locked off the movie.

Mostly behind the scenes, you had a lot of the same crew members that worked on Fury Road. Was that a necessity when you're working on such an epic movie, where there's a second unit going, you knew you could trust that they were on your wavelength?

Oh, yes. It made sense. With our second unit with Guy Norris, we've been working together for so long now that we know what each other wants. We design the sequences together and in the execution of the sequences, we've learnt what we need.

So that whole stunt team, which is quite huge, needs to be very much on the same page purely from the point of safety, let alone about executing the sequences well. The same applies with your shooting crew and your design crew, all your art departments, your costume, makeup, I've been working with some of them for so long now, it's wonderful.

It just stands to reason that it would go more smoothly providing everyone's still got an appetite for it, it works really well.

This movie leads directly into Fury Road, do you view – chronologically at least – that Fury Road is the end of the Mad Max saga? Because you've potentially got The Wasteland, but again that would tell the story before Fury Road.

At this point, I've speculated what happens after Furiosa ascends to the top of the Citadel, but I haven't got those stories mapped out at all yet. There's a lot to tell yet with the Mad Max story.

Are you able to give an update on whether The Wasteland will happen?

I can never predict any one of these. If Furiosa does well enough and we've got the appetite for it, we'll move forward. But at this point, it's way too early.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is out now in cinemas.