Austin Butler was hospitalized after he finished filming Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis,” and it seems like a miracle that he avoided a similar fate on the set of Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two.” The Oscar nominee joins the epic series as Feyd-Rautha, the cruel and sadistic younger nephew and heir to Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). Butler said Entertainment Weekly This heatstroke affected several people on set during the first week of shooting. How’s that for a welcome?
“It was 110 degrees and it was very hot,” Butler said. “I was wearing the bald hat, and between two soundstages were gray boxes of walls and sand 200 feet high. It became like a microwave. There were people dying of heatstroke. And that was just my first week.”
“It really connects the whole crew,” Butler added. “There is something humbling about being in such an uncomfortable environment.”
The first scene Butler filmed for “Dune 2” was a Feyd-Rautha gladiator match on Harkonnen’s home planet where the two fighters fight to prove that he should be his uncle’s heir. During preparation, Butler made sure to pay close attention to Skarsgård’s vocal performance in the original “Dune” because it held the key to bringing his version of Feyd-Rautha to life.
“I felt that because he grew up with the Baron, the Baron would have a big influence on him in many ways,” Butler He explained to Entertainment Weekly About nailing the sound. “So I started thinking about the way he talks, and the connection to the person who you see as having the most power since you were a kid, and who you end up emulating in some way.”
Almost the entire “Dune” crew had to endure extreme temperatures while filming the space epic, which is one reason Villeneuve is grateful that he didn’t go the usual Hollywood route and shot two “Dune” films back to back without a break in production.
“Both films were made in very harsh conditions, and it was very physically exhausting, so to have a break in between was a blessing,” Villeneuve said. “My first idea was to shoot both films together, but now I think I was going to die. It was really intense, and seeing the world’s reaction to ‘Part 1’ was a boost of positive energy to be back in the desert.”
“Dune: Part Two” opens in theaters March 1 from Warner Bros. Pictures.