Photo Sessions > Photoshoots from 2024 > Session 018
Anya Taylor-Joy | That Nomadic Depth of Feeling
FLAUNT – “It was definitely the bloodiest and dirtiest I have ever been in my life,” laughs actor Anya Taylor-Joy, recounting her “war stories” from the set of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in which she stars as the titular lead. “I remember looking at my makeup artist at one point and saying, ‘I am filthy right now!’” she recalls, sharing nothing prepared her—not even her annual trips to Glastonbury, her favorite festival, where she’s well-used to being knee-deep in mud and grime.
Taylor-Joy is almost unrecognizable in the film, covered in the deep red earth of Australia’s outback where filming took place. It’s a far cry from how she looks this morning when we speak, freshly cleansed and make-up-free, her long, recently washed hair still drying. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road and the fifth installment of the Mad Max franchise that began in 1979, all co-written and directed by Australian filmmaker George Miller. They’re filmed in various rural locations across Australia where extreme heat comes as standard, as does dust and dirt from outback wildernesses that neatly double for Miller’s dystopian, post-apocalyptic near-future.
The wild landscape Taylor-Joy found herself in felt even more apocalyptic, she says, because filming took place during deep-COVID-19 lockdown and she didn’t see anyone who wasn’t cast or crew for six months. “It was a very trippy experience,” she says. “There were moments when I realized I hadn’t seen a single person who [wasn’t] a part of the film for months.”
At the end of each day, she returned to Sydney’s eerily deserted streets and her rented apartment with only a kitten for company. She especially missed her “big Latin family,” made up of her Spanish mother, Argentine father, and her five older siblings. Today, family is closer to home as we’re talking at her parents’ house in London. She looks bright-eyed, happy and relaxed as she sits in a comfy chair with her legs hunched up, nursing a morning coffee. She’s “thrilled” to have some rare time off with them over the next few days.
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