Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Mad Max himself, Max Rockatansky, makes a surprise cameo in new prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. So, who plays Mad Max in Furiosa?
Related: Does Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Have a Post-Credits Scene?
Which Actor Plays Mad Max in Furiosa?
Jacob Tomuri plays Max Rockatansky in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. If Tomuri’s name doesn’t ring any bells, it’s because the Kiwi actor works primarily as a stunt performer. His credits include 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, in which he doubled for leading man Tom Hardy as Max in several of the post-apocalyptic blockbuster’s action set pieces. This presumably prompted Mad Max franchise co-creator George Miller to cast Tomuri as Max in Furiosa: he’d already proven he could pass for Hardy!
But why didn’t Miller bring back Hardy himself? We don’t know that he didn’t try, however, Mad Max’s role in Furiosa is so tiny that the in-demand Hardy probably would’ve turned it down. And it’s not as though Hardy enjoyed his time on the Mad Max: Fury Road set. The English actor reportedly clashed with co-star (and original Furiosa actor) Charlize Theron and regularly arrived late for filming.
Hardy has since publicly apologized to Miller for his behavior, which he explained stemmed from his inability to wrap his head around Miller’s vision for Fury Road. “I have to apologize to [Miller] because I got frustrated,” Hardy said at Cannes Film Festival in 2015 (per Vanity Fair). “There is no way George could’ve explained what he could see in the sand when we were out there.”
Related: Furiosa: Is Tom Hardy in the Mad Max: Fury Road Prequel?
Does Mad Max’s Furiosa Cameo Set Up Another Movie?
Yep – although as of April 2024, no additional Mad Max movies were in the pipeline. Miller addressed the status of the franchise in a recent Entertainment Weekly cover story, making it clear Max Rockatansky’s Furiosa cameo is the lead-in to a project that hasn’t yet received the green light.
Related: Why Isn’t Charlize Theron In Furiosa?
“In doing what we did in the preparation of Mad Max: Fury Road, we also wrote what happened to Max in the year before we encounter him in [that film],” Miller said. “And as we get towards the end of this movie, the chronology… Basically, we had to see that Mad Max was lurking around somewhere because we do know what happened. The writers know what happened to Mad Max in that year before, and we have a whole story of that, which I would like to do sometime if I get the chance.”
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas now.
