Anya Taylor-Joy Fought To Change The Ending To Her $174M Sci-Fi Action Prequel: “It Was Hard Won”

Anya Taylor-Joy successfully got the ending of one of her most well-known movies changed, but not without significant effort.

In 2024, the actor starred in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga as the lead protagonist. By its nature as a prequel, the ending was predictable to an extent for everyone who’d already seen 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, where Furiosa was played by Charlize Theron. That said, Taylor-Joy fought to change a specific aspect of said ending in order to give her character some well-deserved personal satisfaction.

In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Taylor-Joy recalled how during Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’s production, she kept going back to director and co-writer George Miller to convince him that Furiosa should get to “destroy” the life of Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus, i.e. the man who destroyed her life. The actor specifically didn’t want her character to give Dementus a “clean kill,” but rather “something that required Furiosa to be the one who decides.” It took some doing, but Taylor-Joy accomplished her objective, saying:

I just advocated and advocated and advocated for her to live up to her name,. That was my mountain on that movie, and I got it, but it was hard, hard won.

Taylor-Joy also noted how Furiosa was a difficult and “suffocating” shoot for her. That’s because Miller required her to play the character with a “stillness” and “rigidity” that contrasted with the “propulsion” she usually brings to her roles. As such, she didn’t open up too much about her experience working with Miller because if she were “to be completely honest about my experience, it would hurt nobody but myself.” Nevertheless, Taylor-Joy is proud that she succeeded in giving Furiosa a cathartic ending.

At the beginning of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Furiosa was kidnapped as a young girl by two of Dementus’ followers. When her mother, Mary Jabassa, attempted to rescue her, Dementus captured her and forced Furiosa to watch Mary be crucified and tortured to death. Adding insult to injury, Dementus adopted Furiosa as his own daughter. When she was an adult, he also had her love interest, Tom Burke’s Praetorian Jack, killed while they were in service to Immortan Joe.

So by the end of Furiosa, the main protagonist exacted her revenge on Dementus by imprisoning the crippled villain in Joe’s Citadel and planting the peach pit her mother gave her into his body, turning him into living fertilizer. A peace tree grew from him, so her revenge literally bore fruit. Whether or not this actually happened to Dementus or if this was a symbolic demise, Taylor-Joy convinced Miller that this was an effective way to close this chapter of Furiosa’s life before leading into the events of Fury Road.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga earned critical acclaim from professional reviewers and general audiences alike. ScreenRant’s Furiosa review rated the movie eight out of 10 stars, saying that it "manages to carve its own valuable place in the world of Mad Max, more than justifying its existence as a standalone movie while still throwing a few surprising bones to fans of franchise continuity.” The prequel also earned numerous awards and accolades, like being one of the National Board of Review’s Top 10 Films of 2024.

Conversely, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ended up being a box office bomb, making only $174.4 million worldwide. As such, it’s still unclear if Warner Bros. will greenlight Mad Max: The Wasteland, the next movie in the franchise Miller has expressed interest in making. Taylor-Joy can next be seen in the Apple TV miniseries Lucky, which premieres in July, followed by Dune: Part Three in December.