KILL BILL 3
How did you get involved in Dune?
Not a super crazy story. I wish it were more exciting. When I found out that it was being made, I was extremely interested. I’ve always wanted to be a part of something sci-fi like that, and I’m a huge fan of Denis. I just went after it and auditioned.
What was your impression of Chani, your fierce Fremen fighter?
My part is very, very small in this movie and that’s why I’m so excited to see it, to see what everyone’s been up to. [Denis and I] had a little discussion about who Chani is and the strength she possesses. She’s a fighter, that’s what her people are. I only really had a few days with her, so I kind of scratched the surface but it was so much fun figuring her out. What does she walk like, what does she talk like? This is her planet, so how does she navigate this world? It was so fun.
How was Denis as a director on set?
He’s so kind and attentive to all of his actors. I was only there for four days and I did not want to leave! Denis understands what he wants from us but he’s also very collaborative, allowing me to have my take on the character as well. I don’t want to jinx anything but I can’t wait to explore her more. I hope I get to learn more from Denis. I love to learn from people who are great at their job.
Did you know Timothée before?
We met at my chemistry-read. I felt like we’d known each other forever, like this was my homie growing up. We became really great friends. He’s obviously very talented and really passionate about his job and takes it very seriously, and
I think it shows in his career. Taking on this massive movie, I would be terrified, you know what I mean? But he handles it with such grace. He’s brilliant.
Many people have been productive during lockdown, but very few have managed an entire movie like you did with Malcolm & Marie. How did that come together?
The inception was just talking to [director] Sam [Levinson, her Euphoria showrunner]. I talked to him almost every day through this quarantine. I was like, “I just want to be able to create something.” We wondered if it was possible to do something with a really, really, really small amount of people, and with all these health precautions. We started talking and got this one idea. He would call and read some of what he had written and we’d talk, and he’d call me the next day and read more. Next thing you know, there’s this great script in front of me called Malcolm & Marie, and we were able to get JD [John David Washington, her co-star] interested. So we quarantined with our very small crew, who were from Euphoria. And we were able to workshop the piece and put it on screen in a very short amount of time, in a very isolated location. It’s something we’re really proud of.
Vivica A. Fox recently said that she wants you to play her screen daughter in Kill Bill 3 if that ever happens. What do you think?
I saw that! I was quite honoured that she would say that. Obviously she’s incredible and I’m very flattered that she would think of me. But, you know, it’s just an idea. The internet kinda takes things and runs with it.
was on the jury there. “I can’t pretend that
I was sitting there evaluating whether I wanted to do this or not,” says Chalamet. “It’s very obvious, just the opportunity to work with Denis. I’m a huge fan.”
For Villeneuve, Chalamet was the only
person who could play Paul Atreides, the boy groomed for leadership who’s plagued by prophetic dreams of a strange desert planet even before he arrives there. He has what Villeneuve describes as an “old soul” combined with the ability to appear many years younger than 24. “He has an insane charisma,” says Villeneuve. “Timothée has been gifted by the gods of cinema.” Then Villeneuve went looking for his Lady Jessica, and found Rebecca Ferguson. “I didn’t want Lady Jessica to be an expensive extra,” says Villeneuve of a character who has been slightly sidelined in some versions but is important here. “Something I deeply love in the book is that there was a strong balance between the masculine power and feminine power.”
Isaac knew both the book and Villeneuve, and had reached out as soon as he knew the film was happening, for any role going. “So you like Dune. Iiiinteresting,” the director replied teasingly. Later the call came through asking Isaac to play Duke Leto. “When I read it again, Leto is the character that popped out to me,” says Isaac now. “Not only from the description physically, but also the conflict between wanting to protect his family, his people, but being forced into an impossible situation that is perilous and yet hoping that he can gain advantage in it.”
That’s how it went across almost the entire cast. Brolin, who plays Atreides weapons master and (according to Villeneuve) “warrior poet” Gurney Halleck, didn’t even read the script before committing to reteam with his Sicario
director (“I think I pretended to read it”). Jason Momoa, as Atreides fighter and spy Duncan Idaho, signed up almost as quickly. “I was literally on top of a mountain, no shit, and he’s one of my top three favourite [directors] of all time. So I snowboarded down the mountain and got my ass back to the hotel room. Got on a Skype call with him, said, ‘I’ll do it,’ right away. It’s like winning the lottery when you get a job like that.”
Leading the Fremen is Javier Bardem’s Stilgar, with Zendaya as a younger Fremen, Chani. “She’s tough and she’s very straight up,” says Zendaya of her role, a relatively small one that could lead to bigger things if there’s a sequel. “She’s already sizing Paul up and not quick to trust.” Balanced between these groups is Sharon Duncan-brewster’s Kynes, an Imperial planetologist on Arrakis. In the book, Kynes was (yet another) white man, but Villeneuve wanted more women because “we are in 2020. I cannot
do Lawrence Of Arabia.” Kynes was an obvious character to swap. As Duncan-brewster says, “Personally, I didn’t see how Kynes being a woman would affect any aspect of the plot. I believe Frank Herbert wouldn’t have minded.” Her quiet, reserved scientist is one of the most important figures in the book, someone with close ties to the Fremen despite her Imperial job title.
Another touch of spice comes from Charlotte Rampling as the Gaius Helen Mohiam, Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit — an order of witches/ prophetesses/nuns/concubines that trained Lady Jessica, and a group with their own mysterious priorities. Rampling was in line to play Lady Jessica for Jodorowsky 45 years ago, so maybe she was always meant for Dune. Perhaps Villeneuve’s dreams were as prophetic as those of Paul Atreides.
As casts go, it’s an embarrassment of riches; the biggest challenge for about half the team was trying not to trip out at the other half. One of the first things shot in Budapest was a meeting of the Atreides, Fremen and intermediaries in the Great Hall, during which almost all the stars were starstruck.
“It’s just this amazing line-up,” remembers Momoa. “You’ve got Brolin, Oscar Isaac, Timothée. And in walks Javier Bardem and
I have never seen anyone that cool in all my life. That’s why he wins fuckin’ Oscars, bro. He walked in like he’s a silverback and just stares us all down.” Bardem, told this, laughs and claims that he was very nervous but that “if Jason
Momoa calls you a gorilla that’s a big compliment because he’s King Kong.”
Villeneuve is proud of his cast. “I made no compromise,” he says. That would become a theme. When it came to the scale of the shoot, his ambitions were equally enormous.
t’s June 2019 and Empire is at Origo Studios, a few miles outside Budapest. We’re also a few million light-years away from Earth, standing in the Atreides residence in Arrakeen, their capital on Arrakis. It’s meant as a Brutalist structure, a sandy-coloured concrete carbuncle, built by the Harkonnens as a symbol of power and dominance. Its hallways stretch for 100 metres, walls reaching high overhead so that there’s no need for green-screen extension in most shots. The place has the air of some monumental tomb despite the (specially printed) acres of Persianstyle carpet underfoot. Bas-relief murals show sandworms at play; huge, bronze doors swing on central pivots. “And this is just a corridor!” says Vermette. “Not even the Great Hall. We’re having fun.” It’s all so vast, Rebecca Ferguson has been getting lost. “Every bloody day,” she says. “Like, ‘Am I on the wrong stage? Hellooooo?’”
For Empire’s visit, however, she is on the correct stage, for a scene where the Atreides family say goodbye to their household staff on their oceanic home planet of Caladan before
Imoving to Arrakis. Chalamet, Ferguson and Isaac have formed a sort of receiving line for their old retainers, with Duke Leto putting a comforting hand on his lady’s neck as she bids farewell to the last of them. Packing cases lie around with their ancestral treasures spilling out, and it’s all very moving. Between takes, Chalamet paces restlessly nearby until it’s time to go again, the weight of the world — or at least, the film — on his shoulders. The Arrakeen spaceport outside is bigger again, lined with palm trees that will, at some point, be set ablaze. There’s a full-size ornithopter parked at one end and a ramp down into the residence at the other. But size is not the only thing this production has going for it. In the prop department, the detail holds up to near-microscopic levels. The ‘Gom Jabbar’, a tiny, poisoned needle with which the Reverend Mother tests Paul, is finely etched along its length in minute swirls and circles, a thing of beauty as well as horror.
This level of world-building came as standard. For Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen the hair and make-up department had to provide a grotesque fat-suit that would absolutely not be comical. Skarsgård is someone Villeneuve had admired since Breaking The Waves, and he was cast for one simple reason: the director finds him scary — and he needed to stay scary. Costumes, meanwhile, had to provide the scale of an epic with the detail of a tiny chamber piece, manufacturing the high style of the nobles
(based partly on cavalry uniforms) and the Fremen ‘still suits’. These are Dune’s signature look — desert wear, designed to protect every drop of moisture in the body and to recycle all waste water back into potable supplies. “A real, functioning distillery,” as costume designer Jacqueline West puts it. And it had to be wearable in a real desert.
Even though the Wadi Rum has been home to hundreds of productions, from The Martian to Lawrence Of Arabia, it still struck most of the cast and crew as an alien, magical place. For Isaac, the desert shoot was a sort of homecoming after Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker: “the same desert,” he notes. “But it’s kind of incredible how two different filmmakers can take a place and give it a completely distinct feel.”
On off-days there were jeep rides or “camels cruising by”, as Momoa puts it — but it was the vast, empty space that made Arrakis feel real and acting almost unnecessary. You can believe a sandworm might pursue you across this environment. “That part of the Wadi Rum is so awe-inspiring, you might as well be getting chased by that cliff in the background,” said Chalamet. “It wasn’t a green-screen or anything. That’s one of the most thrilling parts of the book and the movie. We had the sketches. That was a lesson for me. On a Call Me By Your Name or Beautiful Boy it can be counterintuitive to see the storyboards because then maybe you limit yourself based on a camera angle or whatever. It’s the opposite [here] because, for a sequence with the sandworm chasing you, I could never imagine that.”
Filming on such a scale takes time. At the top of the call sheet for nearly six months, Chalamet got to grips with his first blockbuster lead. This is a far bigger film than anything he’s played the lead in before — but then, that fits Paul’s story pretty well. He is “on a hero’s journey that he didn’t sign up for”, as Chalamet puts it, something far bigger than his experience prepared him to face. How else could you approach that except by jumping in feet-first?
s the world ready for Dune? For all its action and spectacle, a sciencefiction film this big and this seriousminded is a risk. The last Dune was a famous flop and Villeneuve’s previous film, Blade Runner 2049, underperformed at the box office despite rave reviews. Might Dune be simply too dense for modern audiences? It’s clearly a concern for Villeneuve and his team: summer 2020 saw pick-up shooting take place to clarify plot points, making sure that the audience would understand what’s going on at all times. Yet the book also has themes that resonate today, ideas that could strike a big chord with audiences
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