Here are some photos of Anya Taylor Joy in Hollywood last week, and Cannes this week (the big hat pics). Anya and Chris Hemsworth have already traveled to several countries to promote Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and they will premiere the film at Cannes on Wednesday. I actually forgot that Cannes starts this week. Last year’s festival ended up being kind of…boring. I wonder if the festival will pick up some energy this year.

Anyway, George Miller’s films are notoriously difficult to shoot. On Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron had the worst experience of her life, not just because they were all stuck in the Namibian desert for a year, but because Tom Hardy was a complete douchebag to her and to everyone who worked on the film. Would it surprise anyone to learn that Anya also went through some things while filming Furiosa? This is how she discussed it with the New York Times:

How did she feel in late 2022, when she finally wrapped the arduous production?

“Like I knew I was going to need the two years that it took for the movie to come out to deal with it,” she said.

Taylor-Joy told me that championing Furiosa often felt like a solitary experience.

“I’ve never been more alone than making that movie,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”

Her reticence reminded me of when I first spoke to the actors who had made “Fury Road”: During that shoot, the desperation of the characters bled into their real lives, and unpacking that experience took a very long time. Sensing that she was skirting a sensitive issue, I asked Taylor-Joy what exactly it was about “Furiosa” that had proved more difficult than she expected. For five long seconds, she contemplated giving me an answer.

“Next question, sorry,” she said. There was a faraway look in her eyes, as if a part of her had been left behind in that wasteland. “Talk to me in 20 years,” she said. “Talk to me in 20 years.”

[From The NY Times]

A few years ago, there was a book/oral-history about the making of Mad Max: Fury Road and how dysfunctional everything was for months, almost entirely because of Tom Hardy. Charlize had to repeatedly demand a female producer because she felt threatened by Tom, who was chronically late, chronically unprofessional and chronically threatening Charlize. I came out of the piece sort of hating George Miller for not being “in charge” of the production and for not taking care of Charlize and the other actresses (who all hated Hardy). I’m not saying that the exact same thing happened on this film – I doubt Chris Hemsworth would behave that way, and he and Anya seem to get along – but I bet Anya wasn’t “taken care of” or nurtured by anyone. I bet she felt very, very alone.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.