Charlize Theron Shares Surprising Detail About Filming Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road might be among the most beloved films of the 21st century, spinning a post-apocalyptic tale at an often-literal breakneck speed. While the film was set in a desert world — a world that is set to be explored further in the forthcoming Mad Max: Furiosa prequel film — a new comment from one of the film’s stars casts a new light on the whole ordeal. During a recent appearance on the Smartless podcast, original Furiosa actress Charlize Theron revealed that members of the cast and crew actually contracted hypothermia from how cold it was on set.

“It was actually cold,” Theron explained. “Really cold. It looks hot, yeah it was freezing. We had a lot of cases of hypothermia. Especially the young girls who only wear bandages. A lot of them got hypothermia. I was freezing just ’cause when you don’t have hair on your head, you forget it’s a heat releaser. It was really cold, actually.”

What is Mad Max: Furiosa about?

In Mad Max: Furiosa, 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.

The film will be written and directed by George Miller, and will also star Chris Hemsworth as Dementus.

Why is there a Mad Max prequel?

As Miller revealed in an interview earlier this summer, the very ethos of Furiosa came about while he was writing Fury Road, and began to realize that fans might take an interest in hearing the character’s origin story.

“When we wrote Mad Max, the task was to tell a story that was always on the run and to see how much the audience could pick up in passing,” Miller explained to The AV Club. “That was one of the tricks of Mad Max: Fury Road, that there would be references to things of where she’s from, why they’re doing things, but it was always on the run. There were very few moments of quiet. We never explained how she lost her arm. We never explain what the actual Green Place Of Many Mothers was. We never explained the workings of the Citadel. So we had the screenplay virtually complete before we shot Fury Road, and we did it because it arose out of wanting to explain to everybody who Furiosa was—to Charlize when she took on the role, and to all the actors and the designers and everybody else working on the Citadel and so on. The feeling was, gee, this is a pretty good screenplay, and then I kept saying to myself, ‘if Fury Road works, I’d really like to tell this story.’”

Are you excited for Mad Max: Furiosa? What do you think of Charlize Theron’s story about filming Mad Max: Fury Road? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Mad Max: Furiosa will be released in theaters on May 24, 2024.