Ahead of her upcoming honor at the Academy Museum Gala this fall, Charlize Theron stopped by the museum on Saturday night for a discussion about one of her biggest — and most famously fraught — projects, in Mad Max: Fury Road.
The 2015 action film, set in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, stars Theron as warrior Imperator Furiosa, who leads the daring escape of female prisoners from a tyrannical ruler. She co-stars alongside Tom Hardy (playing former captive Max Rockatansky), and the two majorly butted heads throughout the production. The film still went on to major critical and commercial success, landing 10 Oscar nominations and six wins.
At the event, Theron was interviewed on stage by Shyla Corona and Kamila Gomez, two members of the Academy Museum Teen Council, ahead of a Fury Road screening. They touched on the star’s character preparation process and her 2004 Oscar win for Monster, as Theron began to cry, reflecting on her journey from a small town in South Africa to the Oscar stage. “It doesn’t make sense, you know,” Theron said as she wiped away tears, teasing the teen moderators, “You guys suck. I have my daughters here tonight; they can’t see me cry.” She added of her Academy Awards moment, “It’s a true testament that dreams come true, you know. And if it can happen to me, trust me, it can happen to anybody.”
When it came time to talk Fury Road, the girls asked if Theron had a favorite memory from the shoot. As she paused, the crowd began to laugh in acknowledgement of the behind-the-scenes drama, to which the actress responded, “I actually do, OK!” She went on to explain how her oldest daughter was just six weeks old when production began, and she hadn’t arranged a nanny before filming.
Instead, Theron said, “All of the girls in this film and [co-star] Nick Hoult basically raised her for the six months that we were in Namibia. She was in the rig with us; [during filming] she was with the driver and my assistant, but in between takes I was feeding her in the rig and the girls would hold her and then she would fall asleep or she’d puke on Nick.”
“Those are some of my favorite memories because she learned to walk on that movie, so yeah, there’s a deep connection to this film,” she continued before joking with the crowd, “All of you who thought I was gonna tell a different story, shame on you, shame on you!”
Theron also spoke about some initial conflict she had with her character because “I’m allergic to good people, like heroic people who do everything right and for the right reasons” and with Furiosa rescuing women in the movie, “I didn’t really know how to play that.”
“She wants to burn the world down, and you can’t do that as a hero. It took me a while. I had to really figure this out once I was actually in Namibia,” she explained, before realizing that Furiosa was really trying to hurt the tyrannical Immortan Joe and freeing his beloved wives was the best way to do that. “It’s almost like the human condition of selfishness, then, becomes the thing that’s actually good in her life, and I love that. I love that she had to find that. In the beginning, [director] George [Miller] was a little scared of it because he felt like maybe it was too cold,” but came around to giving Furiosa some of those moments.
Theron reflected on the iconic character that Furiosa has become in the last decade, saying, “I cannot tell you how many people have walked up to me and showed me a Furiosa tattoo on their arm,” on top of meeting several children named after the warrior. “To see a little baby in a stroller and go ‘Furiosa!’ is like the weirdest thing ever,” she joked, “but I think she had that impact on a lot of people, and that is the power of art. That truly has nothing to do with me. It’s the power of art, it’s the power of storytelling.”
The star downplayed that anyone may see her as hero either, saying, “I am a flawed human being. I am as flawed as I come, and those are my people. I love flawed people.” She added that she tries to be good and has rules for her children about “please, thank you, be a good person, you can’t be an asshole. But I don’t aspire to be a role model. I want to be a good mom, and my kids will be the first to tell you that I don’t try and pretend to be something that I’m not.”
In closing, Theron said, looking back at Fury Road now, “I take my hat off to George Miller; this came from deep, deep, deep inside of his bones, the story, and it meant everything, it means everything to him. He gave everything to this film.”
“I think he will always be associated with this film in a way that good movies are associated with their director first and foremost, and it’s very rare that you get to experience that as an actor,” she continued. “It’s special when you get to experience that, and so I’m grateful that I have a small part in that, that I’m part of that — but I haven’t seen it in like 13 years, so I don’t know if it holds up, you guys. We’ll see tonight!”
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