“It took a lot longer than I thought, as these things do, but I have to say it was great to be working with most of the same people that we worked with before.”

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The shooting locations for Furiosa included Broken Hill, where Mad Max II was shot, Kurnell in Sydney’s southern suburbs, which was one of the locations for Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and Hay in the western Riverina.

Hemsworth said he grew up watching Mad Max films and his dad, who raced motorbikes, knew a lot of the stunt riders who had worked on them.

“As a young Australian actor, I think it’s everyone’s dream to be a part of a Mad Max film,” Hemsworth said.

Being in the centre of one as epic in scale as Furiosa was “bonkers and crazy and wild and fun” but there were still connections to the original ultra-low-budget Mad Max in 1979.

“There are people who worked on the first film who are still involved in George’s team,” Hemsworth said. “It was honestly the best experience I’ve ever had on set.”

Taylor-Joy, who had to do some of the driving of a souped-up vehicle that fires harpoons in the film, did not even have a driver’s licence when she auditioned over Zoom. During extensive work with personal, stunt, action and fight trainers, she learnt how to do wheelies on motorbikes and 180-degree turns.

The toughest part of the shoot was a chase scene that had 52 characters and 200 stunt performers, and goes for 15 minutes on screen.

“That was shot over 78 days,” Taylor-Joy said. “By the end of it, we were like, ‘oh my God, it’s over! We did it!’ It was really a mammoth undertaking, but I’m so proud of it.”

But there was one driving skill that she never learnt on set – parallel parking.

“They never taught me to,” Taylor-Joy said. “They only taught me to do ridiculous stunts in the car.”

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