From hanging with Kid Laroi, ruling Instagram and starring in a Hollywood blockbuster: The incredible life of Quaden Bayles, 11, since video begging kids to stop bullying him touched hearts around the world

Indigenous youngster with dwarfism Quaden Bayles, who was nine years old at the time a video of him discussing bullying went viral, touched people’s hearts all around the world in 2020.
Hugh Jackman, an actor, and other celebrities have supported Quaden, who is now 11 years old.
Furiosa Quaden has been cast in the next fifth Mad Max movie, and she will also be seen in George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing.

The latest Mad Max movie will feature Quaden Bayles, the diminutive Indigenous youngster whose struggle with bullying made headlines around the globe.

The now-11-year-old will play a small part in director George Miller’s next film Furiosa, a prequel to his 2015 post-apocalyptic action sensation Fury Road.

Following a successful venture onto Instagram, where he has 288,000 followers and can earn up to $2,600 each sponsored post, Quaden is now moving to the big screen.

Hugh Jackman recently met with Indigenous rap star The Kid Laroi. He is one of Quaden’s many well-known supporters.

The Queensland child was already confirmed as an extra in Miller’s next film Three Thousand Years of Longing, which also stars Idris Ilba and Tilda Swinton.

But Miller has also cast Quaden in the 2024 film Furiosa, which stars Anya Taylor-Joy in the lead role.

Along with Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke, Furiosa is the fifth instalment in the Max Max film series, which was launched in 1979 with Mel Gibson as the lead role.

It will describe the early life of Charlize Theron’s formidable Furiosa, the protagonist of Fury Road.

Miller explained in an interview with Good Weekend how his mother Yarraka Bayles’s sad footage inspired him to bring Quaden in front of the camera.

Quaden, who was ridiculed at school and was born with achondroplasia, a type of dwarfism, was seen in the video sobbing hysterically and pleading for a knife to kill himself.

‘I just got my son up from school, witnessed a bullying occurrence, contacted the principal, and I want people to know this is the effect bullying has,’ Ms. Bayles stated at the beginning of the five-minute movie. That’s what bullying accomplishes.

Please educate your children, families, and friends because all it takes is one more incident to make you wonder why young people are committing themselves.

The famous actor Jackman tweeted a video in which he told Quaden, “You are stronger than you realise, friend. And you have a friend in me no matter what.

The Wolverine star continued by pleading with his followers to “please be fair to one other.”

Miller was disturbed by a claim made by News Corp columnist Miranda Devine that Ms. Bayles might have coached Quaden and was also affected by the footage, according to Good Weekend.

Devine eventually expressed regret and struck a deal with the Bayles family before filing a lawsuit in federal court, despite his repeated warnings that the film might be a fraud.

Quaden had not been acting, according to Miller, an Oscar-winning director who was schooled as a doctor and practised medicine.

He reacted to Devine’s remarks by asking, “What the heck would she know about that?” to Good Weekend. “That truly energised me.”

Before Devine’s apologies, Miller had asked Quaden to take part in Three Thousand Years of Longing, a gloomy fantasy movie.

Miller told the magazine, “It was good for us and it was good for him.” And he performed so well that he was given a small part in Furiosa.

In an effort to increase awareness of the effects of bullying, Ms. Bayles published the original video of Quaden.

Even though she would have wanted to keep such a terrifying experience secret, she admitted at the time that she felt forced to go public.

Quaden captained the NRL’s Indigenous All-Stars team against the New Zealand Maori Kiwis at Cbus Super Stadium on the Gold Coast in the same month the video was made public.

He was pictured with Johnathan Thurston, Latrell Mitchell, and Cody Walker, three prominent Aboriginal rugby league players.

Brad Williams, a US comedian, gathered more than $700,000 for Quaden via a GoFundMe campaign to take the mother and son to Disneyland, but the family donated the funds.