Austin Butler suffered to play Fayed-Routha, and we understand why

Warner Bros

Austin Butler is Fayed-Rautha in “Dune 2”.

Cinema – Timothée Chalamet, aka Paul Atreides, needed an equal. He found it in the person of Fayed-Routha. in Dune: Part Two, the bloody character is played by Austin Butler. no starsElvis He literally transformed himself for this role. But it wasn’t easy for the 32-year-old actor to slip into the (pale) skin of Na-Baron Harkonnen.

in Dune 2, viewers meet Vladimir Harkonen’s second nephew, the statuesque and ruthless Feyd-Rautha. Austin Butler willingly accepted this lead role in Frank Herbert’s novel, and the challenge was daunting, as he stated in several interviews.

On the one hand there was the physical aspect of Feyd-Routha. Denis Villeneuve imagined him as the rest of the Harkonnen clan, completely bald and without eyebrows. The problem was, Austin Butler was hired on another project right after Dune 2, Bikeriders. A feature film for which director Jeff Nichols specifically asked him not to shave his head.

As he revealed on the set of the British show The Graham Norton Show, he had to wear a prosthetic skull and forehead. “The prosthesis covers my eyebrows and the top of my eyelids. It was very meticulous work, 1 millimeter accuracy prevented me from opening my eyes. » Actress Olivia Colman then asked him how long it took, and he replied that the installation of the prosthesis required three hours of work each time, much to the surprise of the Oscar-winning actress.

Suffocation of filming Dune 2

Another difficult element to manage during shooting was the heat. Indeed, if Austin Butler did not shoot scenes in the desert of Abu Dhabi, unlike the majority of the cast, he would not have survived. As he confides in this same interview and many others, he filmed in Budapest, and specifically the epic arena fight scene, in the midst of a heatwave. ” It was over 43 degrees Celsius, and my suit was made of a neoprene-like diving suit material, with a prosthesis on my head, sweat… “

A hectic first week of filming he described to Entertainment Weekly. ” The arena was just two huge stages made of gray boxes 60 meters high with sand on the ground. And it quickly became inside the microwave. People fainted from the heat. »

If Austin Butler was too tested by his filming, it’s clear that it was worth it. His character benefits from extraordinary exposure in the second half of mound, And the fight scenes in particular are choreographed to the nearest millimeter. Unlike Sting who was mocked over the years for his role as Fayed Routha in the infamous cult. Dune By David Lynch, Austin Butler should make a positive impact.

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