Furiosa Director Explains Why He Decided Against De-Aging Charlize Theron for Mad Max Prequel

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga director George Miller has explained why he decided to recast Charlize Theron instead of using de-aging technology for the prequel movie.

Theron, who starred as Furiosa in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, was heartbroken when Miller didn’t bring her back for the prequel, but in a recent interview with Empire magazine, Miller said he had his reasons for recasting the role with Anya Taylor-Joy rather than de-aging Theron to play a younger version of the character.

“It definitely would have been Charlize [had Furiosa been filmed before Fury Road],” Miller explained. “I began thinking, ‘Oh, maybe we could do de-aging.’ Then I watched really masterful filmmakers like Ang Lee and Martin Scorsese, doing Gemini Man and The Irishman, and I saw that it hadn’t been licked. All you’d be watching is, ‘Look how well the technology works?’ It would not have been persuasive.”

Miller found a younger Furiosa in Taylor-Joy, who snagged the role after getting a recommendation from Last Night in Soho director Edgar Wright. Miller told Empire he intuitively knew Taylor-Joy was the right person to take on the titular character because she had some strong qualities that she could bring to the role.

“There’s an innately resolute quality in [Taylor-Joy],” Miller said of finding the right actress for the role. “She’s a very determined and rigorous person. She has a mystique about her. And she’d been trained young as a ballet dancer. Charlize trained young as a ballet dancer. There’s a precision to them that was needed.”

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – Official Trailer #1 SlideshowDigital de-aging has become increasingly common, with a younger version of Harrison Ford appearing in last year’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, as well as the de-aging of various actors in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, but some filmmakers, such as Dead Reckoning’s Christopher McQuarrie, opt against it.

In the case of Furiosa, Taylor-Joy is playing a younger version of Theron’s Mad Max: Fury Road character. Trailers have already given fans a glimpse of her renegade warrior – a woman torn from her tribe and forced into servitude by Immortan Joe and his awfuls – with her full debut coming when the movie releases on May 24.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on X/Twitter @AdeleAnkers.