Dune: Prophecy Star Reveals How Timothée Chalamet Inspired Their Audition for HBO Series

Dune: Prophecy builds on the success of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Dune: Part Two, and that includes star Chloe Lea’s performance as Sister Lila. In an interview with Comicbook.com’s Chris Killian ahead of Prophecy‘s premiere, Lea explained how Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Paul Atreides influenced her audition. She said she looke for things to borrow from Chalamet’s performance – with the encouragement of the casting call.

“For me, this is kind of direct, because when I got the audition through, it was kind of like, ‘we only want naturalistic performances,’” she said. “It told us to watch the film, and I hadn’t seen the first film before I got the audition. And so, I watched the film, and then my approach was – ‘I really like this part, I really want to get it,’ and then I was like ‘Okay, I’m going to try and just do something Timothée Chalamet-ish.’ His take on Paul – I thought Paul and Lila have similar kind of trajectories, and so I kind of took inspiration from Timothée’s performance and then luckily it got me the role. So that kind of directly influenced me getting it.”

Asked if she could share anything specifically from Chalamet’s performance that inspired her own, Lea elaborated: “He was just so, like, still, and you can see the thoughts on his face, and I thought with the scenes that I got for my audition for Lila, I just thought that was really prominent as well. I thought that’d be quite cool to try and replicate in some way because he’s just like a master class of acting in everything he does.”

“I mean, I don’t know if anyone saw it if they’d be like ‘Yeah, that was definitely Timothée Chalamet level,’ but it helped me anyway get in the headspace for it,” Lea joked.

Dune: Prophecy is an extreme prequel, set approximately 10,000 years before the life of Paul Atreides and the events of the main story. In this fictional universe, that is still about 10,000 years after the present day. The show is based on the novel trilogy Great Schools of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. These are not a part of the original six Dune novels written by Frank Herbert, but instead the expanded universe material written by his son and Anderson.

The story is about the formation of the iconic organizations in the Dune universe, including the Bene Gesserit, the Navigators Guild and the Mentats. All three struggle for power with the fledgling Corrino empire and the remaining Butlerian Jihadists in the wake of humanity’s war against artificial intelligence. It’s hard to tell how closely the show will follow the books, with some big changes and surprising similarities teased in the trailers and promo material already.

Dune: Prophecy premieres on Sunday, November 17th on HBO and Max, where Villeneuve’s Dune movies are also streaming. The novels are available now in print, digital and audiobook formats.