Mad Max Spinoff Furiosa: How Anya Taylor-Joy Got The Role

Anya Taylor-Joy has been cast as Furiosa in the upcoming Mad Max prequel movie, and now director George Miller has spoken about how it all came together, including her audition.

Miller told Empire that he knew about Taylor-Joy before casting her, but he had never seen her in a movie until he saw her in Edgar Wright's upcoming movie Last Night in Soho. "I remember thinking, 'Gee, she's interesting," Miller said.

Miller and Wright conducted the interview together, and Miller said he recalls saying to Wright, "I'm looking for someone to cast as Furiosa,' and I barely got the sentence out before you said, 'Don't go any further, she's great, she's gonna be huge. She's fantastic to work with.'"

For Taylor-Joy's audition for Furiosa, Miller asked her to read something to camera, and this was the "mad as hell" speech from 1976's Network.

"Apart from the brilliance of the writing, it's a piece that can be done to camera. It doesn't need an acting partner," Miller said. "Anya did one version, which was really good. Then I gave her just a couple of simple notes about intention and she just absolutely nailed[it]. I think it was done on an iPhone. I sent it to the studio. I explained why I thought she was right for the role. I said I was really happy to talk about it but it was so persuasive that we didn't need to talk. The studio said, 'Tick.'"

Whereas Fury Road's story takes place over three days and two nights, Furiosa's story will be much bigger in scope. "This is a saga; it happens over many years, so there's a lot of different elements to it. But that's all I should say," Miller has said.

Furiosa, like Fury Road before it, is in production at Warner Bros., whose 2021 movies are releasing simultaneously on HBO Max and in theaters. Furiosa is expected to begin filming in Australia in 2022.

Fury Road made more than $376 million at the global box office. It was the first new entry in the series at the time since 1985's Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.