Charlize Theron says filming ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ was “fucking tough”: “You don’t want it to be that bad”

Charlize Theron has opened up about her “traumatic” experience filming 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the actress detailed the “fucking tough” process of shooting George Miller’s post-apocalyptic action film, stressing that actor “trauma or sacrifice” is not always required to make a movie great.

“Listen, I know, I said, ‘Oh, as an actor, you want to be challenged,’ but you don’t want it to be that bad,” Theron said. “It was a long, long shoot. I have never done anything that needed that kind of endurance, and I don’t think I ever will [again].”

She continued: “And I hate saying this because I don’t ever want to encourage young actors or storytellers to believe that they need trauma or sacrifice because I really, really don’t believe you do, but there’s a little bit about the circumstances around that movie that I think gave it the magic.

“It doesn’t mean it has to always be that, but I do think somehow the lightning in a bottle that you’re always trying to catch happened on that movie. But, man, it was fucking tough.”

Theron noted that she “never really appreciated or respected George Miller’s vision” until she saw the final cut of the film.

“[I went], ‘Oh my God, this is what was in his head the whole time and I couldn’t hear it,’” Theron said. “And so it’s the one movie where I go, ‘If I had another opportunity, I’d get a little bit more of what he tried to do in the first one.’”

Theron played Imperator Furiosa in the film, a character now set to be portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy in the upcoming prequel Furiosa.

“I don’t know what production on the prequel was like, but I want to believe it was less,” said Theron of the new film, before addressing her omission from the project.

“Listen, I’m not mad about [Miller doing a prequel instead of a sequel]. One of the greatest fucking actresses [Anya Taylor-Joy] is picking up something that I only imagined.”

Last month, Taylor-Joy said that filming the prequel was the “dirtiest and bloodiest” she’s ever been on a film set.

“Any time I get to be dirty or bloody and not perfectly prim and pretty, I’m just having a ball,” she told IndieWire. “That’s where I feel most comfortable. So yeah, Furiosa was definitely right up my street.”

Furiosa is set to be released in cinemas in 2024

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