With his cast in place, Miller set a late-2010 shoot in Broken Hill, Australia, the desert mining town where he had filmed the first two âMad Maxâ movies.
THERON The roughest moment was when we were in Australia, two weeks away from shooting, and they pulled the plug on us.
MITCHELL During preproduction, the weather pattern changed in Australia and it rained and rained in Queensland, the sort of weather that happens once in a century.
GIBSON Slowly, what was desert turned into beautiful flowers. So we put everything into storage and slunk away yet again.
KEOUGH It was the first time I had experienced a big push on a film, and I was heartbroken. I was like, âIs it really because of the weather? Am I fired?â
MITCHELL We were basically defeated. How do we move on?
But Miller refused to give up on the film.
MILLER I said, âLetâs wait a year and see if it all dries up.â And when we saw that it wouldnât, I decided we should to go back to Namibia, where it never rains.
MARGARET SIXEL (editor and Millerâs wife) It was kind of nuts to take all those people and all those vehicles to Namibia. Who would do that? I guess thatâs George. He isnât like other people, really â which is what I love.
HUGH KEAYS-BYRNE (Immortan Joe) It was a wonderful thing to feel everyone around me crashing about in their costumes and absolutely living it.
COURTNEY EATON (Cheedo, another âwifeâ) I had never acted in my life before, except for drama class in school. When I got to set and they asked me to stand on my mark, I turned around and said, âI donât know what that means.â
KRAVITZ There was something really beautiful about how inexperienced a lot of us were â we were so down for the cause. I donât know what it would be like if you had five actresses whoâd been working for a long time that would call their agents and be like, âWhat the hell is going on here?â
ROSIE HUNTINGTON-WHITELEY (the âwifeâ Splendid) Iâve lived with Jason [Statham] for 10 years, and Iâve never known him to have an experience like it. I remember explaining it to him, and he said, âWow, this is so different from how Iâve ever gone to work.â
The spectacular action sequences were difficult to stage, but they had a sense of actual weight and physics that had been lost in a decade and a half of CGI spectacle.
GIBSON All the action had to be real. The hair canât stand up on the back of your neck â not for me, anyway â watching Vin Diesel drag a three-ton safe down through perfect right-angle turns on the street. The whole rationale was to make it as real as possible so that as much as possible was at stake.
HARDY As we dug in, it was dangerous, or certainly could have been extremely so, if it werenât for the methodical professionalism and preparation of the experts: stunt coordination, stunt team and riggers.
BEN SMITH-PETERSEN (stunt performer) On most films like this, youâre working your way up to a stunt â maybe thereâs one a week. But on this film, from the time your day starts, youâre already doing a stunt and then thereâs another one on top of that. It was a stuntmanâs dream.
HOULT I remember turning up one day, and they strapped me under the War Rig in a harness.
KRAVITZ Everything you see is really happening, thereâs no green screen. Iâm really being
pulled out of the truck and going super high in the air â and Iâm pretty sure thatâs Rileyâs husband, Ben, who grabbed me and pulled me out. They met on the movie.
KEOUGH We ended up falling in love. So my husbandâs a War Boy.