SPICE GIRL
REBECCA FERGUSON was the second person cast for Dune – as an empowered take on Lady Jessica
I remember walking on set for the first time and actually getting lost
How did your particular journey to Dune begin?
My agents said, “Denis Villeneuve wants to have a chat with you about his next project. Are you interested?” I was like, “Yes, obviously, right now.” Then he told me about his love project. I was exposed to Denis Villeneuve’s dream Dune for an hour and a half. I put the phone down and I thought, “Well, I’m not going to get that. That would be too insane to get”. He called me the next day, I got the role and then I was in the world. I was second cast, I think, after Timmy. Gradually, Denis would call me and say, “I’ve got this person on board” and then name character after character. Then it was down to Charlotte Rampling. I remember getting these goosebumps all over, thinking, “This is bonkers”. It still amazes me how I react when ensemble pieces come together. Every day on set was just remarkable, because everyone delivers so differently. There’s no mainstream about it. No one has to prove something. Everyone was there because they loved Denis, because they love the script. It was very humbling and very relaxed.
What was it like working with him?
I think the ground pillar in the relationship between me and Denis was in the first meeting with him, when I saw a child come out, he was like a boy. He was like a 12-year-old little kid, just like the way I’m grinning, because I am in love with this film. I’m in love with the project, no criticism will ever harm me. I have experienced this. That is what it was like being directed by someone who has felt the same way reading a book and wanting to recreate his own version. Which means you’re on such a heightened level of excitement. He’s in every creative room. The costume fittings, every dress you wear. The chains I wear are a communication. There’s a reason why I’m wearing everything and if you’re a big fan, you will know them. You will see the subtlety of it, detailed and with love. And that for me, it creates a master in a human being, the way he speaks.
What guidance did he give you for portraying Jessica?
He said, “She’s a character of strength. She’s a mother, she’s a concubine”. I said, “You want me to be a mum, you want me to be a princess? You want me to kick ass?” I realised what he was after was the moments in between. He wasn’t interested in me doing all of the things that are easy for me. He was interested in how I activate these emotions. I remember a moment where I put on a dress, and I had to walk in a scene and wake my son up. It’s the beginning, one of the introduction scenes. He said, “Stop, stop, stop, why are you walking like a queen? You’re not a queen, you’re a mother, and you’re just about to deliver horrendous news.”
How did you construct the mother and son relationship?
It’s a complex one. Number one, Timothée is exquisite, he’s brilliant. He has his own technique. Something that Denis did so beautifully as a director was, he doesn’t have an ego, so he doesn’t have to push himself forward. He steps back, and he watches us. So he knows that people work in a certain way and he will adapt his direction to one and everyone. So it was structured as needed by the maestro. It was like a puppet master, but we didn’t have any strings. We could do what we want, but within the frames. I think what was difficult, and what I loved, was the change of empowerment, of the fear of who is teaching whom. When does that change happen? So we attack every scene as a new scene all the time.
What was Timothée like to work with?
There’s something very magical about Timothée, there’s something very untouchable about him, about the way he acts, about the way he attacks the role or goes into it. I have enormous respect. What I loved was our characters weren’t supposed to love each other all the time. We would follow a form of dynamic with the characters for sets. We were very respectful of where we were in the story, also on set. But I mean he’s exquisite. Isn’t he exquisite? He brings that sort of je ne sais quoi.
What did you do to make Jessica’s mental powers real?
We did a couple of those scenes. They didn’t all make the movie. I wonder if I was making too much fun. I was playing around with it. Denis was very clear. We didn’t know the sound that it would have. That is something that came in the mix with the visual effect and Hans Zimmer. It was a matter of urgency with which it needed to be said, very direct and not forceful. Because all of a sudden you overact. It was quite challenging. My body wanted to show what I meant. And he said, “You don’t have to, I have a camera on your face. You think it and I will understand it”. So that’s kind of how we worked with it.
What was it like walking into the sets of Dune?
In Budapest, they built the actual sets of each and every room in detail. There was also such extreme minimalism within the film. There wasn’t lots of furniture… walls were bare except for a bull’s head. But there wasn’t the need for things, materialism. There was structure for purpose. I remember walking on set for the first time and actually getting lost. I had one of the ADS running after me. I said, “I’m okay, just leave me to soak it up” and I lost her, I literally lost her. From that day they wouldn’t leave me alone, they had a radar on me. The helicopter sequences, obviously we had to put that on a machine arm, but then they threw sand and wind so we couldn’t see out. I couldn’t see a greenscreen, it was just carnage. It was majestic.
Was it particularly difficult working in the desert?
We had two different deserts for two different setups. So we had Jordan’s Wadi Rum, which was much more rocky, and filled with shape and angles and hardness. That was a different emotion, it was communicative in a certain way – you got resonance when you spoke, there was an echo, there were caves. The spiritual place for me was Abu Dhabi. We were in a hotel in the middle of the desert. My back door opened up to the desert, I would just see an ongoing desert. We could only film one and a half hours in the morning and evening, because it was 50 degrees in the middle of the day. I think there’s something very humbling about being so small in such an environment. That’s very much the way that he [Denis Villeneuve] is working on these films: the landscape and then a close-up. I loved it.
a vision for – it was every aspect of the Dune universe, right down to the outfits.
Costume designers Jacqueline West and Robert Morgan worked on making Villeneuve’s lifelong dream a reality “by attacking one thing at a time,” West says. “If I had looked at the big picture from the onset, it would have been overwhelming. But I decided to approach each costume – the stillsuit, the three armies and the spacesuits – just individually and nail the designs with Denis.”
DRESSING UP
Together they divided the book into three worlds. “How do we make each one unique, visually pleasing, believable, and approach this?” Morgan says they asked themselves. The pair were able to meet around the world: Los Angeles, Budapest, Jordan, with costumes also being made in the UK and Spain.
Morgan says that Villeneuve would come to the costume department despite them offering to go to him, giving them full access throughout the production, which saw them create thousands of costumes. “He was so involved and wanted to be so heavily involved. We were able to guide the design in his vision. It was not unlike every film, but it is probably my most incredible experience working with a director and a man who is so keenly tuned to what he wants to see.”
“I felt he saw the look of the movie – maybe not the individual costumes, but the feeling he wanted,” West adds.
“He would have a very visceral reaction when you showed him a design, and I could tell by his body language if I’d hit it, or if I had to go back to the drawing board. He did not want a typical sci-fi look for this movie. It was a philosophical adventure, a mystic adventure, and he wanted something different.
“He didn’t want a videogame look. I came up with a term that he really responded to, ‘modieval’, which I went back to research from medieval painters. But then I would look at modern living, modern costume designs that moved me: Japanese, Cristobal, Balenciaga, Dior. I even looked at modern Italian runway right now and
Denis would have a very visceral reaction when you showed him a design
combined looks with medieval. Denis did it,” she smiles. “He gave everyone the Dune they always wanted to see the book made into.”
The iconic stillsuit which characters wear in the desert was the first costume to be physically completed, West tells SFX, due to it being labour-intensive. She and Morgan worked with concept artist Keith Christensen, with West spending over 100 hours with Christensen on his computer. “I knew that the stillsuit, for Denis, was the centrepiece,” she recalls.
The materials underneath allow the actors’ bodies to breathe in much the same way as modern day football players – West worked with Japanese fabric developers who are already creating clothing that can regulate body temperatures in drastic climates. “Denis, when he saw the prototype and finally got to Budapest, was just blown away. He loved it.”
The first actor to put on a stillsuit was Chalamet. “He was there very early working with Denis,” West says. “He’s very slender and I was worried he would be lost in it, but it fit him so perfectly. It gave him a real solidness. I remember I put it on him, he walked across the floor, and he looked so powerful in it. He started moving with so much power and started going through all his moves that he’d been learning.
“He didn’t say anything, and he looked at himself in the mirror and his whole demeanour changed. All of a sudden, he looked like a knight in shining armour. He had the power. I could tell he was very, very happy. I started draping Timothée with gauze and I put on a wind machine and then invited Denis over, and he was absolutely thrilled.” Morgan also recalls Rebecca Ferguson’s first stillsuit fitting.
“When we tried the stillsuit on her for the first time she was like, ‘Oh, right! I get it!’ and was already doing her moves and how she was going to fight in it.
“It was kind of a basic three-part costume, although it had about 125 pattern pieces,” Morgan adds. “Each one obviously had to be custom-built, but it was basically an underlayer and then a jacket and then a vest that holds it together.
“We did look at The Dune Encyclopedia [1984], which gives an incredible description of how the stillsuits are made, how it functions, what it does, all the properties of it – right down to the nose collection device, which collects the moisture.”
The suits have a wicking layer against the skin, which pulls away the moisture. Morgan describes this as “the reverse of a wetsuit”. The base of the stillsuit was a cotton Lycra, so it was breathable. The costumes could be unhooked to allow the actors to cool down between takes, and eventually the team