Dune Star Recalls Being Horrified by Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen
Dune star David Dastmalchian recalls being horrified during his first scene with Stellan Skarsgård's Baron Harkonnen. Director Denis Villeneuve's film adaptation of Frank Herbert's seminal sci-fi novel from 1965 just released this past weekend in the US, and is currently available both in theaters and on HBO Max. Dune has earned critical praise and generated strong buzz with audiences, opening to Warner Bros. best box-office performance since the studio applied the day-and-date streaming release model to its 2021 slate.
Herbert's book has proven decidedly tricky to bring to the big screen, and to make his vision a successful one, Villeneuve and his team had to alter the source material in key ways. One of these was the film's approach to Dune's primary antagonist, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the profoundly evil and physically grotesque rival of Duke Leto Atreides. While the character is as shrewd as he is monstrous, Villeneuve felt he veered a little too close to caricature on the page, and he and Skarsgård worked on building a more sinister presence, both through the Baron's heavy makeup and the actor's restrained performance.
In a profile for THR, Dastmalchian, who plays the Baron's consigliere Piter de Vries, says the changes were palpable from their very first scene together. The American actor admits that Skarsgård has been a hero of his since 1996's Breaking the Waves and he was excited to work together, but they met when the Swede was already in his full, grotesque makeup. After first only dialoguing with his disembodied voice, Dastmalchian watched the Baron emerge from the steam, and he describes feeling thrillingly terrified:
The first scene we did together was in the steam room. It’s me, Stellan, Dave and these incredible background artists who played slaves of the Baron. Here’s Stellan Skarsgård, an actor I’ve been fascinated with. [...] He was in his Baron manifestation, which is grotesque. It’s horrifying. It’s so overwhelmingly intimidating and yet through all of that incredible prosthetic and design, his eyes and his voice are the most powerful part of his performance. He just scared the crap of me. It was awesome. The first time we really interacted, I can just hear his voice, because he’s so enveloped in the steam of the scene, and he couldn’t just go hang out in a cast chair. It wasn’t like we were just sitting their chit-chatting. All of a sudden he’s rising out of this steam and I get my first look at him and it was terrifying.
2021 has been a banner year for Dastmalchian, and not just because he was able to appear on-screen with one of his favorite actors. After having reliably played numerous smaller roles, most memorably part of Scott Lang's crew in the Ant-Man films, he broke out in a big way in James Gunn's The Suicide Squad as the now-fan-favorite Abner Krill/Polka-Dot Man. Combined with his key role in Villeneuve's Dune, his third collaboration with the French Canadian director and certainly one of the year's most visible blockbusters, this year has cemented Dastmalchian as a known figure among genre fans.
Skarsgård's head of House Harkonnen is a bright spot in Villeneuve's epic, and likely contributed to Dune: Part 2 being officially announced yesterday after the director gambled his vision on this film's performance. The Harkonnens feature heavily in the second half of Dune, with the Baron's nephew and heir Feyd-Rautha yet to be introduced, and fans will be excited to see more of Skarsgård's Apocalypse Now-inspired take on the villain. Dastmalchian's de Vries unfortunately won't be appearing in the sequel, but his ever-growing audience of appreciators will surely be looking forward to whatever project he does next.
Source: THR