Given that practically any item from a movie set can be sold as memorabilia these days — I once worked with a writer who bought some of the gritty, gravel-covered rubber frogs from the rain-of-frogs scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, on a whim — it’s no wonder that film fans tend to have a small, enduring fascination with the items that movie stars sneak off movie sets. It can seem endearingly human for a celebrity to want a souvenir of a production — or just tellingly hilarious about what a given star values and finds cool.
Polygon recently got a chance to sit down with Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth to ask, among other things, whether they wanted to keep anything from the set of Furiosa, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road prequel. Hemsworth says he wishes he could have kept the teddy bear his character, Dementus, keeps chained to his body throughout the movie — a small leftover detail from the anime series Miller was planning to make about Furiosa. “I didn’t. I should’ve,” he says. “The detail was pretty incredible for the art department and from George. I’m going to track that bear down. We need it to come home.”
Taylor-Joy, on the other hand, says she kept the prosthetic arm she wears in the latter half of the movie, after a particularly destructive encounter with Dementus. She adds that there were multiple versions of the prosthetic, depending on the needs of specific shots: “a soft one for certain kinds of stunts, and then you need a hard one for when you’re really looking heavy metal.” (She did not, however, say which one she wound up taking home.)
Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth on what props fhey’d like to take home from Furiosa. #furiosa #madmax #movies
Polygon also asked what Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth would bring along if they had to visit the Wasteland — the post-apocalyptic Australian setting of the Mad Max movies. Taylor-Joy says she would bring the cat she now owns after adopting in Australia, “a Wasteland kitty” who she says is “well-trained” so he could be on set during the shoot.
Hemsworth, on the other hand, suggests he would just bring as many solar panels as possible, to get around the Mad Max series’ obsession with and wars over fuel (“guzzolene” in the series’ mythos). “I’d just be like, No need for the war!” he says. “I think the next film will be full of solar power.”
Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy talk about what they would bring to the wasteland. (Both are great ideas) #furiosa #anyataylorjoy #chrishemsworth #madmax
In a more serious vein, Hemsworth and Taylor-Joy addressed the action sequences they found most memorable to shoot. Hemsworth says he never really got to be central to the kinds of stunts Taylor-Joy was involved with.
“My character was sort of Emperor-esque, sort of at the back, pointing his finger and forcing everyone else to charge into the fray,” he says. “I had a few driving scenes, which were a hell of a lot of fun.”
Taylor-Joy, on the other hand, calls back to the lengthy sequence where Furiosa stows away on the undercarriage of the giant battle vehicle, the War Rig, and ends up in the middle of a massive chase and fight sequence. “That whole sequence — we shot that for 78 days,” she says. “It was the first thing that I shot. It was the last thing that I shot. The crew of people that made that possible — there was definitely a moment, like maybe day 50, where you’re just like, How am I still on this rig? But it was so cool seeing it come together. And the fact that it has such an important storyline — you get to see her kind of in her new form, how quickly she acquires skills. That was very satisfying.”
Furiosa is in theaters now.
The post Anya Taylor-Joy walked off the Furiosa set with her favorite prop appeared first on Polygon.
