(The editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers For season 1 of “Dune: Prophecy.”)
That was not enough for Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros. to mount three large budget glasses directed by Denis Villeneuve Based on Frank Herbert’s classic “Dune” series. (The First Two Were Blockbusters Grossing $ 1.1 Billion Worldwide. The Third, “Dune: Messiah,” Also Starring Timothée Charamet, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, and Rebecca Ferguson, is Due December 25, 2026. TV Series “Dune: Prophecy.”
Executive produced by Diane Ademu-John and Showrunner Alison Schapker, the show also takes place on a massive scale. The veteran wearing the six-section (who starts production on a second season this summer) is Emily Watson, a British character actress who broke back in 1997 with a best actress Oscar nomination for Lars von Trier’s “Breaking The Waves.”
With 28 years of rich work behind her (Oscar-nominated “Hilary and Jackie”, Bafta-nominated “Angelas Ashes”), Watson appears in a powerful role as Valya Harbonnen, the ruthless, driven mother Superior from the sisterhood, an early predecessor to the powerful Bene Gesserit. She and her black resting minions drive the universe and practice their dark art behind the scenes. “Dune: Prophecy” is loosely based on Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s “Great Schools of Dune” Trilogy (2012–2016), which is canceled 10,000 years before the events in “Dune.” We talked at New York’s Park Lane Hotel.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Indieview: The series is beautifully mounted at all levels. It is well thought out. It’s smart.
Emily Watson: Yes, and we have every chance to go in a smart direction, because with Serie 1 we had a little strike on us. We got a lot of movement, things get pretty crazy, changing staff.
You had started with your “Chernobyl” director Johan Renckthat left creative differences. Anna Foerster directed the first two episodes instead. It was a bit of a wrench?
It was very varied soil. When I registered with Johan he is a simple character, a pretty amazing guy. He had a pretty Lynchian vision. And the studio obviously wanted it to belong to this current universe more. It ended up being a fake start. And then it was to get ducks in a row. It went before it was done. But they calculated DNA for what they wanted and how they wanted it. And then we had the strike. Now I know Alison (Schapker) in the driver’s seat and she has been confirmed as (successful). I’m happy to get the teeth to (season two).
When do you start?
It’s the middle to the end of August, for me. I’m starting to go back to Bucharest.
So you and Olivia Williams as your sister Tula Harkonnen anchor the story. She was at the Royal Shakespeare Company with you. Were you friends?
We were. I have known Olivia – my husband was at Cambridge with her. So it’s like 25 years ago?
I feel I came with you. I was at Cannes to “break the waves”, and such Miramax 90’s films as “Hilary and Jackie.”
We survived, right?
It was the indie period. You describe yourself as an indie film.
It was a real time, right? It was a strange time. You had to find out what it was and what it meant and how you could sit through it.
But it was treacherous to women. Especially actresses. Did you learn to abolish people and keep you safe, rules you played for?
I was lucky, because I started by “breaking the waves.” I was with a role model, Stellan Skarsgård, as my partner in crime. It was a creative exposure and scary experience.
You were exposed to Cannes without your director Lars von Trier, who was afraid to fly.
So he didn’t come. I didn’t know what Cannes meant. I had no knowledge of the film world or anything. It was a baptism of fire. They sent me to Dior to put me in a dress, like a Chintz sofa which was much of the period.
Do you admire von Trier?
I love that he exists, that he has changed the map, that he has done what he has done and he has been controversial. Other actresses have not had comfortable experiences with him, but that was not my experience. But just in the way he imagined what a movie is, I didn’t know it at that time, but he changed things.
You figured out a few things on that movie about movie acts?
I guess I did it because of how we shot it. There were no settings. We just filmed. We just made the scene over and over again, and the camera was like a character in the scene walking around looking at us. So there was no feeling of intrusion into the technical world. We were just in it. It was very engrossing. And you learn very quickly.
“Dune: Prophecy” was series -TV. It must have been challenging for you to wear it.
It required some persuasion to make me do.
What was your concern? You had just acted in “Chernobyl.”
I have never done anything that is a return (to a franchise). I have obviously done TV before. She was an exhausting character to play. She was tough and hard. And my natural screen presence is generally empathetic and receptive, and she is not. I had to reach it a bit. When I found it she was there. But it was also leading a team of young actors and actresses, a lot of them were quite inexperienced, just trying to teach people how to survive: “This is how precise and concentrated and in it you have to be to survive the fact you have By in a whirlwind, and it’s not going to be what you think it’s going to be, because they’ve got to do that, and they ‘got to do that, and they’ve got to do it. “To help people still feel that they make something meaningful and real and create a feeling of a company.
I got a kick from Valya. She is ruthless and powerful. Thought some of you?
It was interesting to me and played a character like it, because I grew up in a religious, strange cultist situation (School of Economic Science). I have experience with charismatic leaders and how they recruit people, how they tell young people that they are special, they are chosen and this is the way. It’s her story. She is lost, she is vulnerable. She is powerful, talented in the sense that the currency in that universe is mental ability and sharpness, and she has it in spades. And the leader picks her out and says, “You are the one. You will help me change the universe.” And that’s how the momentum for these things gather, because these people think they are special in a way that the end of motivates the funds. It is the construction of a cult, which will be 10,000 years in Paul Atreides universe, Bene Gesserit.
What does she think her mission is? What drives her?
She uses eugenics to pair the right people, so that the right leader, who will save humanity, will put them on the right path for peace and justice and prosperity and goodness. We will make it happen by controlling. But to support that work, we have the sisterhood and all the truthful tasks, which can discern the truth from lies and keep everyone who makes good decisions. But we also have a very sophisticated network of spies and underhand methods to manipulate people so that we make ripples that make people believe that they have control over events, but we actually manipulate people’s reactions so that things happen.
You learned something about what a powerful despot can be. It’s at the right time, right now. You look at it play in the real world.
Frank Herbert wrote these books back in the 60s, but these things do not disappear. It’s a bike. The sisterhood, on the surface, discovers the truth. But they actually manipulate it. They check it. They create the myth. They create the circumstances when they want to benefit. At the current age, there is a need to look at it.
This series reminds me of “Wolf Hall.” It is royal intrigue!
When Olivia was thrown, I said, “We will go to the National Portrait Gallery in London and we will look at all these women, Elizabeth I and all Mary’s, all people who lived in the totalitarian fear-driven place.” These power corridors were so paranoid.
What comes in season 2?
Next time you go to Arrakis. During the final (season 1) I go into what happened to Desmond (“Vikings” star Travis Fimmel). He has got a thinking machine in his eye. I know someone manipulates him and someone consciously sets us up.
He is reunited with his mother, Tula. What is the fear virus?
In the final I make him consciously infect me. He could look at you, and later you would start burning. The fear virus works through fear. You are inflamed, and then it takes over your body chemistry and burns from the inside.
Actresses often complain a lot about the roles they are offered, but you have had a good driving.
I have been lucky that I have been on the right side of that change. I am a character actor; It liberates me from a certain path. It has changed with the advent of streaming. Fifty percent of the audience are women. And the direction is no longer dictated this man, this man, this man, this man, this man. There are five people who can make a bank bar movie in Hollywood. It’s not the same for TV. But it has been the mentality for a long time that you have to have a bank bar male leadership, and it has changed because it is you and I who sit in the living room with the buttons that go: “It’s boring. I don’t want to look at this.”
You have come up Chloe Zhao’s “Harbor”, based on Maggie O’farrell’s best seller in 2020.
I play Mary Arden, mother of Shakespeare, who is a typical woman on her day trying to survive, married to a man who is a drinker. She meets this young woman, Shakespeare’s wife Chloe (Jessie Buckley), who is magical, witchcraft, connected. She can tell things about people by holding her hand. It is about the death of the port, their elders. They had a couple of twins, but Hannah died when he was 11 years old, and it is a story about giving birth and losing children and the women around it.
