Charlize Theron has spoken openly about the problems she had filming Mad Max: Fury Road with her main co-star, Tom Hardy. But director George Miller recently revealed what may have caused their rumored feud while filming in the Namibian desert.
speaking to The TelegraphMiller initially attributed this to their creative differences, noting, “They were just two very different artists.”
But he revealed: “Tom has a damage, but also a brilliance that goes with it, and whatever was going on with him at the time, he had to be coaxed out of his trailer. While Charlize was incredibly disciplined (a trained dancer, which showed in the precision of her performance) and she was always the first one on set.”
Miller compared their differences to the on-screen tension between their characters, who became reluctant allies in the 2015 post-apocalyptic film.
“I’m an optimist, so I saw that their behavior reflected their characters, where they had to learn to cooperate to ensure mutual survival,” Miller said. “There’s no excuse for it, and I think there’s a tendency in this business to use big performances as an excuse for other disruptions that could be avoided.”
As Variety reports, Theron admitted in the Mad Max: Fury Road Oral history Blood, sweat and chrome who has since come to regret how she and Hardy handled their conflict at the time.
He said it felt like “two parents in the front of the car. We were either fighting or freezing (I don’t know which is worse) and they had to deal with it in the back. It was horrible! We shouldn’t have done that; we should have been better. “I can recognize that.”
In one case detailed in the oral history, Hardy allegedly arrived on set three hours late while Theron waited at the War Rig in full costume and makeup.
“The set call was at eight o’clock. Charlize arrived right at eight o’clock, she sat down at the War Rig, knowing that Tom would never be there at eight even though they made a special request for him to arrive on time,” said camera operator Mark Goellnicht. “He was known for never arriving on time in the morning. If the time of the call was in the morning, forget it: he didn’t show up.”
Miller later said in his interview that he warned Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth about the psychological toll filming can take on them. “You have to be obsessed with safety: physical safety, as filming progresses and fatigue sets in, but also psychological safety. It’s not like the old days,” she recalled telling them.
Taylor-Joy recently hinted at the difficult time she had filming the prequel, in which she takes on Theron’s role as Furiosa.
“I’ve never been more alone than making that movie,” she said recently. The New York Times. “I don’t want to get too deep into this, but everything I thought was going to be easy turned out to be difficult.”
When the NYT Pressed for more details about what made the production so difficult, Taylor-Joy shut down the line of questioning, telling the outlet, “Talk to me in 20 years.”
furious opens in theaters on May 24.
