Anya Taylor-Joy praises ‘Mad Max’ stunt team

CEBU, Philippines — Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays the lead in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”, was full of praise yesterday for her stunt double in the action-packed blockbuster that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

The 28-year-old actor has the title role in the fifth installment of the wildly popular post-apocalyptic franchise from Australian director George Miller, which premiered on the Cote d’Azur late Wednesday.

“When George and I first had a conversation it was very important to him that I was willing to throw myself into it as much as I possibly could,” Taylor-Joy said at the press conference.

She said she had become best friends with her stunt double, Hayley Wright, since the filming. “Everything she did, I did too,” said Taylor-Joy. “Rather than being an environment of aggression...it was ‘I love you, I believe in you, you can do this’,” she added. “God I love these stunt people, they’re so wonderful...and you know what? Best people on set, always!”

Producer Doug Mitchell said it took a stunt department of 264 people to create the movie’s relentless and complex action sequences – one of which took no less than 74 days to shoot.

“Every day, we all wake up with the reality that we could injure somebody or kill somebody, so the stunt department isn’t just there to madly do something. It has a tremendous amount of infrastructure underneath it,” he said.

Taylor-Joy plays the younger version of Charlize Theron’s character from the previous installment, “Fury Road.”

Miller said there was the possibility of another film, since he had written a back-story for both Furiosa and Max’s characters while making “Fury Road.”

“There’s certainly other stories there...but I’ll definitely wait to see how this goes before we even think about it,” said Miller.

Chris Hemsworth, who plays the bad guy, Dementus, said he loved the “villainous persona” but wanted to “sprinkle in moments of vulnerability.”

“There was a vibrance and bombastic nature on the page and I wanted to lean into the absurdity of the character,” he said.