“If you look at the classic, almost inevitably male heroes — going back to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood — they’re usually very laconic,” he said, adding that the mute performances delivered by Holly Hunter in “The Piano” and Jane Wyman in “Johnny Belinda” won both of them Oscars. “When you’ve got someone with a lot going on and they’re silent, the audience is getting ahold of a lot of stuff. It’s that thing that you can really only do in cinema.”
Taylor-Joy took Miller’s point but still felt Furiosa was owed an eruption. “I am a really strong advocate of female rage,” she said, noting that in too many films, female characters are made to endure all manner of hardships while crying only a single delicate tear.
“We’re animals, and there’s a point where somebody just snaps,” she said. “There’s one scream in that movie, and I am not joking when I tell you that I fought for that scream for three months.”
While making “Fury Road,” Theron waged a similar campaign on behalf of the character, arguing that when Furiosa was brought to her lowest point, it demanded some sort of cathartic outburst. Miller eventually granted that wish, and the result — a scene improvised by Theron in which Furiosa falls to her knees and lets out a primal scream — gave the film one of its most iconic moments. When I brought that negotiation up to Taylor-Joy, she nodded.
“With George, it’s a long game,” Taylor-Joy said. “You plant the seed day one, you leave it for a bit, then you check on it.” Once, she debated a character choice with such intensity that her voice broke in front of Miller and she started to cry. “He was like, ‘You care so much, it’s beautiful.’ And I was like, ‘I’m trying to tell you something!’”
Still, one of her primary goals was to make sure the 79-year-old director always felt respected.
“I wanted to make sure that I was never insolent in any way, that it was always a conversation,” she said. “At the end of the day, this is his vision. I can present everything that I have, but his word goes.”
