Dune stars say learning to "walk without rhythm" was not as easy as it looks
Rebecca Ferguson and Sharon Duncan-Brewster discuss the secrets of "the sand walk" and the resonant themes of Denis Villeneuve's Dune
As Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” advises, “Walk without rhythm, and it won’t attract the worm.” He was, of course, making reference to Frank Herbert’s sci-fi saga Dune, set on the desert planet Arrakis, which is overrun by massive, deadly sandworms. The best way to avoid them? Traipsing the land in a distinctive, rhythm-less gait.
But how, exactly, does one “walk without rhythm?” “Weapon Of Choice’s” Spike Jonze-directed video doesn’t provide any concrete answers—though it does offer up some unforgettably smooth moves from Christopher Walken—so The A.V. Club turned to two of the stars of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation for advice. Surely they could give us some pointers, right?
“It was so hard—I have so much rhythm, so it was so difficult,” jokes Rebecca Ferguson, who stars as Lady Jessica, the mother of protagonist Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), and member of the powerful Bene Gesserit. According to Ferguson, the secret is not worrying about looking too cool (“I think I did a good job of that”), but thinking, instead, about the science behind it. “The technology that you use to break the rhythm of waves so that bridges don’t fall is sending out other noise to break the rhythm.” It’s all about the way your steps vibrate, acoustically, throughout the earth, and that’s something the actor kept back of mind as she was dashing across the desert during production.
As Sharon Duncan-Brewster remembers, some of her Dune co-stars were actually trained to get the walk just right: “There was some sort of choreography going on; there are rules to how to do these these movements.” And though she plays Arrakis’ imperial ecologist Dr. Liet-Kynes, Duncan-Brewster shared her disappointment that she never got to learn the moves herself: “I personally didn’t have to do all that, even though my character would know how, but I definitely saw some practice going on. I won’t say who it was, but they were looking good when I saw them.”