There was just something about Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth that left George Miller confident in their ability to understand Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga's characters.

"It is purely an intuitive decision," the returning Mad Max director told Entertainment Weekly in a new profile about his post-apocalypse franchise's first official spinoff. "You've got to say to yourself, 'Okay, there's something about this actor and who they are intrinsically as a person. Can the Venn diagram overlap [with the character] to some degree? How much will it overlap, and what can they bring?'" This meant finding the right person for a pre-Imperator Furiosa (Taylor-Joy) and her Wasteland nemesis Dementus (Hemsworth), with theThor star's intellect ultimately convincing Miller that he was right for the villain part. As Miller explained, "He had a lot of wisdom about everything — about himself, about the world, about even a story like this, where it's a world in extremis, and about how people would cope with all the moral injuries that happen in this world."

Taylor-Joy, meanwhile, was already on Miller's radar for young Furiosa -- played in Mad Max: Fury Road by Charlize Theron -- thanks to her Last Night in Soho performance and personal background. "Have you met Anya?" Miller added while summarizing the actor's appeal and why she was the right choice for Furiosa's origin story, something he wrote up during Fury Road's pre-production stages but largely alluded to in the film. "There's definitely a mystique to her, but also, there's someone very, very resolute in her. You sense it almost immediately. And I think that's up there on the screen," he continued.

Furiosa's Backstory Gets Explored

Trailers for Furiosa have gradually teased details of its lead's backstory, such as Furiosa being kidnapped from the fabled "Green Place" and her encounter with Fury Road's Citadel leader Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme, replacing the late Hugh Keays-Byrne). While prior Mad Max films played loose with continuity, Furiosa will mark the first tie-in between cinematic entries and even other media, with one report claiming the prequel will reference events from the 2015 Mad Max game. At the same time, Miller claims the prequel will feature "a "blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo" by Max Rockatansky, teasing what Max was up to before he and Furiosa officially crossed paths in Fury Road.

According to Miller, Furiosa will span roughly 16 years of Furiosa's life and be narrated by an in-universe figure, the History Man, tasked with preserving past information in the Wasteland. Post-Furiosa, Taylor-Joy will star in Apple TV+'s The Gorge, while Hemsworth will voice a young Optimus Prime in Transformer One.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga premieres in theaters on May 24.

Source: EW