In a different, stranger world, Mad Max: Fury Road could have starred Eminem and Rihanna
Both musicians were considered for roles in the movie during a long casting process
Film Features Mad Max
The long, blood and gasoline-soaked road to Mad Max: Fury Road’s release is well-documented in both oral histories and documentaries. But there are still new bits of information to be uncovered from the movie’s production, such as the imagination-igniting news that, at one point, it could have starred Eminem and Rihanna.
This absurd tidbit comes to us through an excerpt from Kyle Buchanan’s Blood, Sweat, & Chrome: The Wild And True Story Of Mad Max: Fury Road just released by Vulture. Buchanan writes that director George Miller and casting director Ronna Kress’ “casting search was expensive and extensive.”
Among the many candidates considered for the roles of Immortan Joe’s five wives were Jennifer Lawrence, Margot Robbie, and, most surprisingly, Rihanna. Miller recalled the meeting, saying that most “actors turn up dressed very casually, but boy, Rihanna looked spectacular when she walked in.”
“I’m not sure she was even aware of the content of the movie, so she dressed up as Rihanna,” he said, “Which was the right thing to do.”
During this casting process, Miller and Kress also considered Rihanna collaborator Eminem as a potential Max. Alongside actors like Michael Fassbender, Heath Ledger, Joel Kinnaman, Jeremy Renner, Eric Bana, and Armie Hammer, Marshall Mathers himself was a possibility for the role that ultimately went to Tom Hardy.
“He’d done 8 Mile, and I found that really interesting,” Miller recalled. “I thought, He’s got that quality.”
Miller asked Brittany Murphy (who was in both 8 Mile and Miller’s Happy Feet) about Eminem and “she had no reservations about saying what a wonderful talent he is.” The possibility was apparently serious enough that the movie’s lead storyboard artist, Mark Sexton, was “brought in to redraw a bunch of storyboards in March 2007 and do a bunch of cut-and-pastes to put blond hair on Max.”
Unfortunately for all of us who would’ve liked Fury Road’s car stunts to be broken up by the occasional wasteland rap battle, Miller says Eminem “simply didn’t want to leave home” to shoot in Australia, which was where the filming was originally meant to take place. “I think he had the impression that if he could do it out of his home state, then he’d be up for it,” Miller said.
For Sexton’s part, he was “kind of glad it didn’t happen.”
“Eminem, really? Whole different bent there,” Sexton said. “And the feminist story behind Mad Max: Fury Road might have taken a bit of a hammering if he’d played the role.”
While we’re perfectly happy with the casting choices Miller and Co. did eventually make, this information changes a few things for us. Namely, we now have no choice but to assume that Eminem and Rihanna were referencing Fury Road in “Love The Way You Lie” when he raps that part comparing a relationship to being “high off of love, drunk from her hate, it’s like I’m huffing paint.”
To read the rest of the excerpt, head on over to Vulture. Or just wait a little longer to read Kyle Buchanan’s Blood, Sweat, & Chrome when it’s released on February 22nd.
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