James McAvoy Ran Naked On The Set Of The Dune Miniseries

Get ready for an onslaught of “Dune” material now that Hollywood has recognized there’s quite an audience for author Frank Herbert’s revered sci-fi saga. Not only do we have the upcoming MAX series “Dune: Prophecy,” the trailer for which reveals several sacrifices will be made, but we’ll also see the return of Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides in a third movie from sci-fi maestro Denis Villeneuve.

After “Dune: Part Two” proved massively popular at a time when the box office wasn’t exactly at its peak, you better believe Legendary Pictures decided to keep the spice flowing with a third “Dune” movie. The next installment in Villeneuve’s epic saga looks likely to be an adaptation of the second novel in Herbert’s original run, with Villeneuve previously revealing his eagerness to adapt “Dune Messiah.” At this point, the man can basically do no wrong, having proven Herbert’s supposedly “unfilmable” novels could indeed be made into compelling and popular movies. But if the French Canadian filmmaker does follow through on his promise to adapt “Messiah,” he wouldn’t be the first to do so.

Back in 2003, the Sci-Fi Channel, as it was then known, produced a three-episode TV series that took on the vertiginous task of melding Herbert’s two novels, “Dune Messiah” (1969) and “Children of Dune” (1976) into one ambitious mini series. “Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune” wasn’t exactly the technical feat that Villeneuve’s films represented, but it wasn’t without its charms and leant into the political intrigue in a way that other adaptations didn’t. Oh, and it also had quite a bit of naked James McAvoy.

In 2000, the Sci-Fi Channel had a go at adapting “Dune” with “Frank Herbert’s Dune.” While it wasn’t the finest on-screen version of the books you’ll ever see, it was the most faithful, and came crammed with every little detail from the novels. Compared to David Lynch’s 1984 attempt at adapting the material, and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s infamously failed project, “Frank Herbert’s Dune” was actually okay. So, in 2003, Sci-Fi had another crack at it with “Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune,” and as “Dune” adaptations go, it wasn’t bad either.

Written by John Harrison and directed by Greg Yaitanes, the series served as a direct sequel to “Frank Herbert’s Dune” and similarly became a big hit for the Sci-Fi Channel, winning an Emmy for Outstanding Special Visual Effects in the process. In the show, Alec Newman played Paul Atreides, but we were also introduced to the Muad’Dib’s two children, Leto II (James McAvoy) and Ghanima (Jessica Brooks).

Yes, long before McAvoy broke out with his roles in “The Chronicles of Narnia” or “Atonement,” he played the son of the great Paul Atreides. At the time, the actor was just 23 years old, but gave a brilliant performance in the role of Leto II. Oddly enough, though, he also seemed slightly too eager to abruptly strip off.

These days, James McAvoy is offering stoic advice to Timothée Chalamet about how to play Paul Atreides. But back in the day he was much more inclined to do stuff like get naked at a moment’s notice. In a SciFi.com interview around the time “Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune” debuted, McAvoy revealed that during filming he took the opportunity to strip off for seemingly no reason at all. This is surely the kind of thing that wouldn’t fly on a set in 2024, but 2003 was a different time, and apparently revealing yourself to the production crew without any warning was perfectly Kosher back in the day.

In fairness, according to McAvoy he already “appeared in this film naked many times” before deciding on his impromptu strip. As he recalled it:

“We were doing running through the desert, we’d done it like 17 times, and the second unit director said ‘Do you want another one? Just try something different, do anything you like. We don’t really need it, but in case you have anything else left in there that you wanted to kinda get out.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ve got a lot in me I need to get out.’ So I went around the back and got naked and decided to do the run completely naked, and then do a somersault at the end.”

What does being naked have to do with anything? Nothing, by the sounds of it — aside from maybe some sort of strange embrace of the fact that McAvoy had several other scenes where he had to shed his clothes. It seems the actor came to his senses halfway through the run, too, with the Scot saying “I’m thinking, ‘What a good idea!’ … ‘No it’s not!'”