Rebecca Ferguson Reveals Her Most Awe-Inspiring Moment in ‘Dune: Part Two’

With Dune: Part Two hitting theaters in less than a month, Rebecca Ferguson is about to return as Lady Jessica, the steel-willed mother of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet). But Jessica is a complicated character, and in the second installment in the Dune trilogy, she undergoes an incredible transformation.

We sat down with Ferguson to talk about Jessica and the world of Dune. Ferguson shared her thoughts on Jessica’s journey, along with a moment on set that she found especially poignant.

In Frank Herbert’s original novel Dune, water is such a precious resource that the desert-dwelling Fremen of Arrakis collect the moisture from the bodies of their dead. Ferguson told us about a scene in the upcoming film in which Jessica will see that ritual for herself.

“There’s a moment where Javier [Bardem, who plays the Fremen warrior Stilgar] takes my character on a journey … It’s all the bodies that have been emptied [of their moisture], and it’s just this mass of water. [It put] into perspective of understanding what these people believe in, and the power that they have, and how much water means to the world … Environmentally, there are so many aspects of it. That was very big for me, standing there, looking at it. It was so beautiful, on so many levels.”

At the end of Dune: Part One, Paul and Jessica flee their home after House Atreides is destroyed. They join the Fremen, and Paul has a vision that readers of the novel quickly recognized: Jessica’s ascension to a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit. In the trailers for Part Two, we see several glimpses of Jessica in her new role, riding in a litter and wearing elaborate headdresses and tattoos. Jessica’s role is fraught, though. As we learn in Part One, the Bene Gesserit have manipulated the Fremen by deliberately seeding prophecies about Paul.

Ferguson also told us about Jessica’s evolution, explaining that working with the source material made it easy to understand the character, so that she could turn her attention to individual moments—including the pivotal scene from the novel in which Jessica drinks a potentially deadly substance.

You can check out the full interview below!

Dune: Part Two comes out in theaters on March 1, 2024.

(featured image: Warner Bros.)