Dune: Stellan Skarsgard Recalls His Extreme Experience

Dune is finally playing in theaters and it had a strong opening night at the box office despite also being available to stream on HBO Max. The movie is currently up on Rotten Tomatoes with an 83% critics score after 284 reviews and a 94% audience score after 500+ reviews. In honor of the movie's release, ComicBook.com's Brandon Davis got to speak with some of the star-studded cast, including Stellan Skarsgård, who our readers will know best as Erik Selvig from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. During the chat, Skarsgård recalled the extreme experience of creating his villainous Dune character.

"You're not trained for it, but I mean, I've had a lot of prosthetics and shit in my face all over my career, so I'm pretty used to it, but this is definitely the biggest makeup I've ever had and it took eight hours to put on every day," Skarsgård said when asked about his look for the movie. "But I actually had to physically train to be able to have the strength to carry that suit and, and work in it without looking like I was a paraplegic or something."

When asked about being such a looming presence in the film, he added, "Well, that was the big discussion, of course, because you had to make a physical presence that was uniquely present throughout the film. And of course, you had help from Dave [Bautista] and his character, you had help from the set and all those things, but then we had discussions because in the beginning there were some talk about having some costumes that were sort of armor and warlike and stuff. And I was so against it, I said, that's Marvel and this is not Marvel, and both Denis [Villeneuve] and Jacqueline [West], the costume designers sort of agreed on that. And we ended up with those wonderful silky nightgowns that just followed his body and his body is not only big, it also has a great presence on screen." 

Dune is based on the novel by Frank Herbert and stars Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides, Zendaya as Chani, Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Dr. Liet-Kynes, Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban, Javier Bardem as Stilgar, and Stellan Skarsgård as Vladimir Harkonnen.

Dune is now playing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.