When asked by Vanity Fair why he returned to movie acting for “Dune: Part Two,” Walken said that it was an opportunity that seemed too good to pass up. “I had, of course, seen the first ‘Dune’ a number of times,” Walken stated. “I loved it, and I admired [director Denis Villeneuve’s] movies. Arrival, I thought, was wonderful … And to be with all those terrific actors — Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh, and Stellan Skarsgård — and to go to Budapest, which is a beautiful city. And of course, that’s what I do for a living. It was only, I think, three weeks. So, everything about it was attractive.”
Three weeks of work, hanging out in a beautiful city with great actors? What’s not to love? And just how did Walken get into the mindset of playing the Emperor of the Known Universe? “I can tell you that it’s probably better not to think about it,” the actor said. “When I was young, I had to play a king in something. I was in a Shakespeare play. It was Henry II. And an older actor said to me, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He said, ‘If the director sets it up so that people treat you like the king, you don’t have to do much.’ And I sort of trusted that to happen.” That makes sense — if I was on a set with Christopher Walken, I would just automatically treat him like the Emperor of the Known Universe.
“Dune: Part Two” is now in theaters.
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