Furiosa Director George Miller Explains Why He Had to Recast Charlize Theron From Mad Max: Fury Road

Not long after Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters, filmmaker George Miller was pressed for a follow-up. The box office phenomenon had landed some Academy Award nominations in big categories — a rarity for a tentpole blockbuster — and it was clear that the movie’s breakout star was Furiosa, the antiheroine played by Charlie Theron. For a moment, it seemed like Theron might return to reprise her role in the prequel, but it didn’t take long before that idea was off the table. Instead, New Mutants star Anya Taylor-Joy will play the role in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

In a new interview, Miller said that he wanted to use Theron, but that since the movie was a prequel, he would have had to either use a younger actor, or digitally de-age Theron so that she would look younger in her solo movie than in Mad Max. As it turns out, some of the best uses of that technology were what turned Miller off.

“It definitely would have been Charlize [had Furiosa been filmed before Fury Road],” Miller told Collider. “I began thinking, ‘Oh, maybe we could do de-aging.’ Then I watched really masterful filmmakers like Ang Lee and Martin Scorsese, doing Gemini Man and The Irishman, and I saw that it hadn’t been licked. All you’d be watching is, ‘Look how well the technology works?’ It would not have been persuasive.”

In that same interview, he praised Taylor-Joy, saying that like Theron, she was an incredibly compelling actor who could bring some of her personal energy to the part.

“There’s an innately resolute quality in [Taylor-Joy],” Miller said. “She’s a very determined and rigorous person. She has a mystique about her. And she’d been trained young as a ballet dancer. Charlize trained young as a ballet dancer. There’s a precision to them that was needed.”

In Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, 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.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is set to hit theaters on May 24th.