“I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, okay, besides that part.’”

Chris Hemsworth had to be told to stop defending his villainous character: ‘The guy killed a bunch of people’

"I'm like, 'Oh yeah, okay, besides that part.'"

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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January 5, 2026 10:06 p.m. ET

Chris Hemsworth stars in 'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga' (2024). Credit:

Nobody says a thing when you lavish praise on Thor or Eric the Huntsman. But you start defending a mass murderer, and suddenly it's: "Chris, stop talking!"

Chris Hemsworth learned that even empathy has its pitfalls when he took on the role of Dementus, the triple bike-riding warlord bent on imperial insurrection in George Miller's *Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga*. Though not an outright villain like the tyrannical Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), Dementus exhibits psychopathic behavior throughout the film, engaging in human trafficking and even murder.

After discussing the process of getting into the mindset of the character on a recent episode of the *On Purpose* podcast, the Australian star told host Jay Shetty that it's not so much that "the lines get blurred" between himself and his characters, but that he's "been on press tours defending my character, and then being tapped on the shoulder and like, 'The guy killed a bunch of people.' I'm like, 'Oh yeah, okay, besides that part.'"**

Chris Hemsworth in 'Bad Times at the El Royale'. Kimberley French/Twentieth Century Fox

"While I was doing other films, I was thinking about that character who began to sort of infect my thoughts daily, to the point where I had to kind of try and put it aside because I had to get back to the film I was currently on," Hemsworth reflected.

After journaling about the character — the role that prompted him to take up that particular practice — Hemsworth realized, "He was a pretty ugly, villainous individual on paper and on screen, as well. But I had to find a way to sort of understand and empathize with his position."

Dementus at first presents as a paternalistic figure to the young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy). But his rearing in the forsaken Wasteland ultimately takes over, when he orders Furiosa's mother to be tortured to death — in front of her. Still, Hemsworth reasoned, "from his point of view, he was the hero.... Each day was kind of an experiment and a real sort of deep dive into the psyche of this individual and what were the sort of justifications for his actions, which were perceived from one angle as horrific, but from his angle and his position, from where his people were standing, [as] survival of the fittest."**

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Stepping into Dementus' shoes wasn't Hemsworth's first time at the antagonist's rodeo. He'd previously played the psychotic cult leader Billy Lee in 2018's neo noir *Bad Times at the El Royale*. But he'd also played Thor, one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's most noble heroes, a whopping 11 times on screen by the time *Mad Max *came calling.

Hemsworth told * *for a 2024 *Furiosa *cover story that the role initially "scared the s--- out of me," recalling that he felt, "I don't really have a handle on the character. And I don't quite have all the confidence that I would normally have walking into this."

But ultimately, after some journaling and the transformative hair and makeup process, he felt that *Furiosa *"was a real departure, and it was nice."

You can watch the rest of Hemsworth's appearance on the *On Purpose *pod above.

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Source: “EW Sci-Fi”