SPOILER ALERT: This text incorporates spoilers for the premiere of “Dune: Prophecy,” titled “The Hidden Hand,“ now streaming on Max.
Eight months after the premiere of the film “Dune: Half 2,” it’s time to go 10,000 years into the story’s previous with HBO’s prequel sequence “Dune: Prophecy.”
For the reason that present is ready within the distant previous, there’s no Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen or Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan Corrino — however their household dynasties are effectively represented in “Dune: Prophecy.” The present explains the origins of the Bene Gesserit, the highly effective, all-female sect that secretly pulls the political strings of the universe. (Rebecca Ferguson’s Woman Jessica and Lea Seydoux’s Woman Margot are among the many most well-known Bene Gesserit in Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” motion pictures.) Emily Watson and Olivia Williams star as Valya and Tula Harkonnen, two sisters who lead the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood.
The premiere episode begins with a flashback to the Butlerian Jihad, a struggle waged by people in opposition to all pondering machines that’s one of many earliest occasions chronicled within the “Dune” novels. The battle worn out (nearly) each pc, Home Atreides members had been labeled heroes and the Harkonnens had been villainized and banished. Years later, a younger Valya Harkonnen is made the chief of the Bene Gesserit after the inaugural Mom Superior Raquella dies. Moments earlier than her loss of life, Raquella has visions of huge sandworms on Arrakis and burning flesh — an omen of what’s to return in 10,000 years.
Now an grownup and the brand new Mom Superior, Valya is making ready to induct Princess Ynez Corrino (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) into the Bene Gesserit. Her mother and father are Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Robust) and Empress Natalya (Jodhi Could), who’ve Ynez coaching with studly swordmaster Keiran Atreides (Chris Mason). Regardless of their goo-goo eyes at one another, Ynez is politically betrothed to the prince of Home Richese, who seems to be a nine-year-old boy.
In the meantime, a soldier named Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), who survived an assault on Arrakis, arrives and requests an viewers with the Emperor, however the resident Reverend Mom Kasha (Jihae) is suspicious of him. Identical to Mom Superior Raquella earlier than her, Kasha additionally will get an ominous imaginative and prescient of what’s in retailer for Princess Ynez.
The imaginative and prescient rapidly comes true as Ynez’s marriage ceremony to the Richese boy goes off the rails. After he’s married, the little groom pulls out a seemingly innocent robotic lizard, however the toy is an outlawed pc that’s been forbidden. The royal visitors panic, however Desmond destroys the machine earlier than it might trigger an excessive amount of hassle. In a surprising twist, nevertheless, Desmond later finds the Richese prince and burns him alive with some form of telepathic hearth powers. The identical destiny befalls Reverend Mom Kasha, as questions on Desmond’s previous start to rise.
Showrunner Alison Schapker and stars Watson and Williams break down the premiere with Selection, discussing their Harkonnen characters and making a “Dune” universe that’s 10,000 years up to now.
Courtesy of HBO
How acquainted had been you with the world of “Dune” earlier than signing on for “Prophecy”?
Alison Schapker: My historical past with “Dune” began, like many individuals, as a fan and as an adolescent studying it in my attic bed room. I’ve a really sturdy reminiscence of studying that e-book. I discovered it very mind-blowing and affecting, after which I went on with my life and profession, and I’ve been writing quite a lot of science fiction. When it was within the ether that “Dune” was coming to tv as a sequence, and that I would in some way be concerned in it, it was only a actual no-brainer. It felt like a dream I didn’t know I had, as a result of you’ll be able to’t think about one thing like that coming your method.
Emily Watson: I’d seen the primary “Dune” film, however that was it. However it was a stunning factor to leap into. There’s a lot to wrap your head round, a lot lore of the world but in addition actual, down and soiled human habits.
Olivia Williams: I had a hotline to Alison, and stated, “I want your most thorough and swiftest crash course.” And she or he, happily, wrote the guide. We sat and he or she went via level by level what I wanted to know. The person who got here to put in my audio-visual in my home, after I informed him I used to be paying Tula Harkonnen, he knelt at my ft. At that time, I knew that I needed to take this significantly. Lots of people’s hopes and desires had been at my behest, and I wanted to respect that.
You could have Denis Villeneuve’s motion pictures as a reference of what the longer term appears to be like like, however how was creating the world 10,000 years up to now?
Schapker: It’s an immense quantity of world constructing. Nothing exists in our world, so that you’re imagining all the things. What does that hat seem like or that swimsuit or that mild? To me, filmmaking is so many little choices, and I attempt to do every one with care and let the imaginative and prescient accumulate. We went to new planets that we’ve by no means been on earlier than. We went to an icy planet, so what do folks gown like there, what’s the trade, the place do they stay, how does it really feel acquainted and actual to us but in addition unfamiliar?
Williams: Most significantly, there’s no sand. Ours is a really damp planet with quite a lot of moss, and there was a person with a with a tank stuffed with water on his again, spraying us down at each alternative.
Watson: We name it 10,000 years B.C. — Earlier than Chalamet.
The Harkonnens from the flicks are all pale, bald villains, however how are Valya and Tula portrayed otherwise in “Prophecy”? What’s their relationship like with the Atreides household?
Watson: The title Atreides makes us wince as a result of they’ve, based mostly on a lie, ruined our popularity and our fortunes. That’s how I’m telling it. Within the “Dune” universe, there’s nothing actually that correctly qualifies nearly as good or unhealthy. We predict we’re excellent. Not all people would agree.
Williams: In the event you look again at any struggle over land and energy and household feuds, the place does it begin? The science fiction within the 60s has this honorable custom of reflecting what you see in actual politics now. Who was there first? Who owns this land? Whose household spat on whose goat first? It’s human nature in no matter era, 10,000 or 20,000 years from now. Sadly, folks don’t neglect.
One of many different parts that’s eerily related to our world at this time is the position of expertise and AI. Did you count on that it will be that prescient while you had been making the present?
Schapker: It’s a really trippy expertise to be working in a “Dune” universe that imagines the fallout of synthetic intelligence and the value that people paid — and the good price to the species to present their pondering over and outsource that. It imagines a worst-case state of affairs the place the factitious intelligence ultimately subjugates folks and requires an enormous struggle that nearly pushes folks to the brink of extinction. The suspicions, fears and value of what that expertise might carry, you’re within the fallout of my inventive world after which in the true world, I stroll round and I see folks completely giving over their pondering. What occurs in the event you don’t have a machine? We’re gonna try this; I believe we’re simply going to see that. I don’t know that it’s stoppable, so it does really feel prefer it’s an excellent time to be asking questions. This present would assist you formulate some questions round expertise.
This interview has been edited and condensed.