There's 'No Excuse' for Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron's Mad Max: Fury Road Feud, Says Director

Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller is reflecting on the disagreements that brewed between costars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron while making the 2015 blockbuster.

In an interview with the U.K.'s The Telegraph about his new movie Furiosa — an origin story starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Theron's previous character — Miller, 79, admitted that differences between Hardy, 46, and Theron, 48, on set amounted to significantly different approaches between the actors.

“I’m an optimist, so I saw their behavior as mirroring their characters, where they had to learn to co-operate in order to ensure mutual survival," he said. “There’s no excuse for it, and I think there’s a tendency in this business to use great performances as an excuse for other disruption that could be avoided.” 

Much has been reported of an on-set feud between Theron and Hardy on Fury Road, in which Hardy portrayed the title character Max Rockatansky. In 2022, a book published about the film's fraught production even featured Theron's claim that an argument between the actors resulted in Theron asking for a mediator between the pair.

Almost nine years after that film's release, Miller told the outlet that Theron and Hardy "were just two very different performers."

“Tom has a damage to him but also a brilliance that comes with it, and whatever was going on with him at the time, he had to be coaxed out of his trailer," he said. "Whereas Charlize was incredibly disciplined — a dancer by training, which told in the precision of her performance — and always the first one on set.”

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With Taylor-Joy, 28, costarring alongside Chris Hemsworth in the new movie from Miller's post-apocalyptic franchise, the director told The Independent he took time to talk with the stars prior to production about the stress the film could cause.

“You have to be obsessive about safety — physical safety, as the shoot goes on and fatigue sets in, but also psychological safety,” he added. “It’s not like the wild old days.”

Furiosa takes audiences on a 15-year journey for its lead character that leads up to her appearance in Fury Road. Miller has said multiple times in recent months that he originally wrote Furiosa and Fury Road's screenplays at the same time, but he decided to make Fury Road first. He previously told Empire in March that even Theron wanted to make Furiosa prior to Fury Road's production.

“It was the first time I realized that there’s something really strong in this story," he said of the prequel film.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in theaters May 24.