It’s been a little over a year since Austin Butler starred as Elvis’ titular singer, a role that netted him a Golden Globe win and and Academy Award nomination. Now we’re only a few months away from him returning to the big screen for Dune: Part Two, where he plays Feyd-Rautha, the youngest nephew of Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Like his uncle and brother Glossu Rabban, played by Dave Bautista, Feyd-Rautha is by no means a good guy, but Butler’s costar Stephen McKinley Henderson talked about how kind the younger actor was to him in the midst of praising the Elvis Presley actor’s latest performance.
Henderson is reprising Thufir Hawat in Dune: Part Two, with the Mentat now being forced to serve House Harkonnen following the destruction of House Atreides in the first movie. So although Feyd-Rautha treats Thufir deplorably, Butler treated Henderson quite decently when the cameras stopped rolling, as the latter recalled while speaking on the This Is Purdue podcast:
[Austin] played a character that was not very happy with me at all, and he was quite chilling, and I was giving him back the looks, but when they say, ‘Cut,’ he would come over and say, ‘Mr. Henderson, are you okay? Can I help you? Can I get you anything?’ And he was just so nice. And then we'd go back to roll and he went, ‘Ugh.’ He was on my case. So I just so appreciated Austin, a wonderful, wonderful person.
It’s good to hear that Austin Butler treated Stephen McKinley Henderson so kindly when they weren’t performing rather than going too method with the role and maintaining an unpleasant personality even after a scene was done shooting. That said, now I’m eager to see just how cruelly Feyd-Rautha treats Thufir Hawat during Dune: Part Two. As the extremely selfish individual who’s intended to take over House Harkonnen someday, it goes without saying that Butler’s version of Feyd-Rautha, just like the original version of the character from Frank Herbert’s novel, treats most around him disrespectfully. From the way Henderson was talking, it sounds like Thufir earns an especially big amount of Feyd-Rautha’s contempt.
Austin Butler was first reported to be in the running to play Feyd-Rautha back in March 2022, just a few days after it was said that Florence Pugh was being eyed to play Princess Irulan. Both their castings were confirmed weeks later, and the other newcomers in Dune: Part Two’s cast include Christopher Walken as Emperor Shaddam IV, Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot, Souheila Yacoub as Shishakli and Tim Blake Nelson in an undisclosed role. The lineup of familiar faces reuniting with director Denis Villeneuve besides Henderson, Skarsgård and Bautista includes Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Charlotte Rampling.
Dune: Part Two is still set for a November 3 arrival on the 2023 movie release schedule. In the meantime, both Dune and Elvis can be streamed with a Max subscription, and be sure to read about what we’re most excited to see in the sci-fi epic sequel.
