Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth star as Furiosa and Dementus in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. The movie, which hits theaters on May 24, serves as a return to the iconic dystopian world of Mad Max, sharing the origins of the title character. However, it can also be experienced as a standalone action adventure.
As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.
“I love the idea of no matter how hard somebody pushes you down, if you just keep getting back up, at some point you’re gonna come out on top,” Taylor-Joy shared, reflecting on how the role empowered her personally. “I think it’s interesting in films like this because it is all so big, you really understand what it is to have one woman’s singular journey be disrupted and constantly almost controlled by these two giant powers that be, it feels like for her. And so, her absolute resilience throughout all of it and her insistence on remaining in some way dignified, I really, really connected with it.”
Hemsworth opened up about exploring Dementus as the villain, explaining, “The hero and the villain, they both think of themselves as the hero, you know? Neither thinks they’re the evil version, and that can be the trapping is you pick it up in your script, and you think, ‘Oh, I’m the bad guy, I need to do bad things.’ The script does that for you. I had to find a way to, I don’t know, I guess, insert some humanity into him, understand sort of what was it about this individual that needed and wanted the attention, and why was there a flamboyance and a sort of need to be heard? And it came through, I guess, the same as everyone else in the Wasteland, a frustration. They’d been stomped on and treated unfairly, and faced all sorts of brutality and suffering, and this was his attempt to kind of push his way through and, I guess, amass a large following of people and promise them a way out of the suffering. But it was a really fun character to play with, just the layers that the script allowed me was unlike anything I’d played before.”
We talked about their individual characters, the beautiful back-and-forth of collaborating on the bigger moments, and stepping into this beloved franchise as fans.
Watch my interview here:
