CHANI ZENDAYA

Denis Villeneuve has described this as a war movie and a romance…

What Denis is masterful at is, in these kinds of films where everything is so big, the stakes are so high, and everything quite literally feels otherworldly, he has a keen sense of finding what’s human, and what connects. What’s the connective tissue that’s emotional, that no matter quite literally what planet you’re from, you can feel? That, at the end of the day in this situation, was love.

And trying to sculpt out and find a love story amidst all that in Dune is not easy. Especially when you add something that I’m very grateful for. I appreciate that in this version he gave Chani a real perspective, a real point of view, and allowed her to stand firm in that, which adds more for me to be able to enjoy and sink my teeth into. Because she’s not meeting the messiah and going, “Oh, he’s the messiah, great, love you!”. There’s more of a battle and resistance to everything he is and represents.

At the end of the day it’s a battle between the mind and the heart. That’s a lot of fun, as an actress, to kind of figure out. So he has to earn his way into her heart – it’s not just handed over, given.

That was really fun to carve out with everyone, because it really was a group thing. Denis would have new scenes, he’d come and he’d say, “I just wanted to add a little extra scene.” In every scene that we have, we always do, like, a glances pass, which is just us, me and Timothée, on opposite sides of the room glancing at each other. He said, “You did it in every scene,” so that at some point, if he ever needed to add some extra glances to build that story, you’d be surprised what you can do with a literal glance. I just appreciated finding that.

What was the most ambitious moment of filming this movie?

I feel like it’s an ambitious movie in general. I am constantly wondering how Denis fits it all in his brain and still is nice and kind and patient, because there’s just so much going on all the time. Somehow you still feel like you have his attention too.

I think every day when you go to work, and you’re either in these massive, beautifully built sets, or you’re on location, and you get to see the most gorgeous views and nature that I’ve ever seen and that’s your day job… I get to see the sunrise and the sunset in these places and that’s where I get to go to work. So it’s hard to complain and be like, “Man, this is challenging,” because at the end of the day, you really feel like you’re a part of something much bigger than yourself.

Even the days where you feel tired, you look at Denis and you see how excited he is, and how happy just to be there, and you’re completely reinvigorated. I feel like the whole thing is ambitious, it’s a lot to bite off. If anyone can pull it off and do it, it would be Denis.

Have you read Dune Messiah yet?

I have… I started it. I started it a long time before we started the second film. Then I thought to myself, I’m getting a little ahead of myself, I need to go back and reread the first one. So I then instead just went back to reading Dune again. But I am excited to dive into it when the time comes to get into that.