SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the premiere of “Dune: Prophecy,” titled “The Hidden Hand,” now streaming on Max.
Eight months after the premiere of the movie “Dune: Part 2,” it’s time to go 10,000 years into the story’s past with HBO’s prequel series “Dune: Prophecy.”
Since the show is set in the distant past, there’s no Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, or Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan Corrino — but their family dynasties are well represented in “Dune: Prophecy.” The show explains the origins of the Bene Gesserit, the powerful, all-female sect that secretly pulls the political strings of the universe. Emily Watson and Olivia Williams star as Valya and Tula Harkonnen, two sisters who lead the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood.
The premiere episode starts with a flashback to the Butlerian Jihad, a war waged by humans against all thinking machines that’s one of the earliest events chronicled in the “Dune” novels. The conflict wiped out (almost) every computer, House Atreides members were labeled heroes and the Harkonnens were villainized and banished. Years later, a young Valya Harkonnen is made the leader of the Bene Gesserit after the inaugural Mother Superior Raquella dies. Moments before her death, Raquella has visions of massive sandworms on Arrakis and burning flesh — an omen of what’s to come in 10,000 years.
Now an adult and the new Mother Superior, Valya is preparing to induct Princess Ynez Corrino (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) into the Bene Gesserit. Her parents are Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong) and Empress Natalya (Jodhi May), who have Ynez training with studly swordmaster Keiran Atreides (Chris Mason). Despite their goo-goo eyes at each other, Ynez is politically betrothed to the prince of House Richese, who turns out to be a nine-year-old boy.
Meanwhile, a soldier named Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), who survived an attack on Arrakis, arrives and requests an audience with the Emperor, but the resident Reverend Mother Kasha (Jihae) is suspicious of him. Just like Mother Superior Raquella before her, Kasha also gets an ominous vision of what’s in store for Princess Ynez.
The vision quickly comes true as Ynez’s wedding to the Richese boy goes off the rails. After he’s married, the little groom pulls out a seemingly harmless robot lizard, but the toy is an outlawed computer that’s been forbidden. The royal guests panic, but Desmond destroys the machine before it can cause too much trouble. In a shocking twist, however, Desmond later finds the Richese prince and burns him alive with some kind of telepathic fire powers. The same fate befalls Reverend Mother Kasha, as questions about Desmond’s past begin to rise.
Showrunner Alison Schapker and stars Watson and Williams break down the premiere with Variety, discussing their Harkonnen characters and creating a “Dune” universe that’s 10,000 years in the past.
How familiar were you with the world of “Dune” before signing on for “Prophecy”?
Alison Schapker: My history with “Dune” started, like many people, as a fan and as a teenager reading it in my attic bedroom. I have a very strong memory of reading that book. I found it very mind-blowing and affecting, and then I went on with my life and career, and I’ve been writing a lot of science fiction. When it was in the ether that “Dune” was coming to television as a series, and that I might somehow be involved in it, it was just a real no-brainer. It felt like a dream I didn’t know I had because you can’t imagine something like that coming your way.
Emily Watson: I’d seen the first “Dune” movie, but that was it. But it was a gorgeous thing to leap into. There’s so much to wrap your head around, so much lore of the world but also real, down and dirty human behavior.
Olivia Williams: I had a hotline to Alison and said, “I need your most thorough and swiftest crash course.” And she, fortunately, wrote the manual. We sat and she went through point by point what I needed to know. The man who came to install my audio-visual in my house, when I told him I was playing Tula Harkonnen, he knelt at my feet. At that point, I knew that I had to take this seriously. A lot of people’s hopes and dreams were at my behest, and I needed to respect that.
You have Denis Villeneuve’s movies as a reference of what the future looks like, but how was creating the world 10,000 years in the past?
Schapker: It’s an immense amount of world-building. Nothing exists in our world, so you’re imagining everything. What does that hat look like or that suit or that light? To me, filmmaking is so many little decisions, and I try to do each one with care and let the vision accumulate. We went to new planets that we have never been on before. We went to an icy planet, so what do people dress like there, what’s the industry, where do they live, how does it feel familiar and real to us but also unfamiliar?
Williams: Most importantly, there’s no sand. Ours is a very damp planet with a lot of moss, and there was a man with a tank full of water on his back, spraying us down at every opportunity.
Watson: We call it 10,000 years B.C. — Before Chalamet.
The Harkonnens from the movies are all pale, bald villains, but how are Valya and Tula portrayed differently in “Prophecy”? What’s their relationship like with the Atreides family?
Watson: The name Atreides makes us wince because they have, based on a lie, ruined our reputation and our fortunes. That’s how I’m telling it. In the “Dune” universe, there’s nothing really that properly qualifies as good or bad. We think we’re very good. Not everybody would agree.
Williams: If you look back at any war over land and power and family feuds, where does it start? The science fiction in the 60s has this honorable tradition of reflecting what you see in real politics now. Who was there first? Who owns this land? Whose family spat on whose goat first? It’s human nature in whatever generation, 10,000 or 20,000 years from now. Sadly, people don’t forget.
One of the other elements that is eerily relevant to our world today is the role of technology and AI. Did you expect that it would be that prescient when you were making the show?
Schapker: It’s a very trippy experience to be working in a “Dune” universe that imagines the fallout of artificial intelligence and the price that humans paid — and the great cost to the species to give their thinking over and outsource that. It imagines a worst-case scenario where the artificial intelligence eventually subjugates people and requires a massive war that almost pushes people to the brink of extinction. The suspicions, fears, and cost of what that technology could bring, you’re in the fallout of my creative world and then in the real world, I walk around and I see people totally giving over their thinking. What happens if you don’t have a machine? We’re gonna do that; I think we’re just going to see that. I don’t know that it’s stoppable, so it does feel like it’s a good time to be asking questions. This show would help you formulate some questions around technology.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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