On Josh Smith’s Great Chat Show, Rebecca Ferguson talked about returning as Lady Jessica in Dune: Part Two, and told a story about the day she found the courage to stand up for herself on a film set.
Lady Jessica transformed
For Ferguson, Dune: Part Two recalls the excitement of the great cinema events of the past. In this film, Lady Jessica becomes the Reverend Mother: forced to “drink or die”, she now carries centuries of knowledge. For the scene of that transformation, Denis Villeneuve asked how far to go; her stunt double, a dancer, taught her contortions. Ferguson also wore facial tattoos inspired by the Litany Against Fear, and says she has rarely felt so powerful.
“You call yourself an actor?”
Raised by a powerful, outspoken mother, she long tried to be more reserved, while never fearing to say what she thinks. The moment she is proudest of came years ago: a co-star, whom she does not name, humiliated her in front of the crew, asking whether she called herself an actor. Because this person was first on the call sheet, no one protected her, and she cried walking off set. The next day, she told the co-star to leave and said she would act opposite a tennis ball. The producers objected; she offered to act to the back of the person’s head. The director later admitted he had been trying to keep an unstable star happy. Since then, she says, she has never let herself go home wondering why something like that happened.
On Dune, by contrast, she felt completely safe, with a director who chose kind, professional people. She says she learned a lot from watching Timothée Chalamet’s process.
What comes next
Ferguson worked in a clothes shop, a nursery and a Korean restaurant in Stockholm, and says she has always felt she would be fine whatever happened. She credits the Mission: Impossible films, and Tom Cruise, with teaching her a great deal, including safety checks on stunts. Now she wants to move beyond the roles she is often offered, the strong agent, the queen, the countess, because she already knows she can do them.