Rebecca Ferguson Was Terrified Filming An Important Dune Scene

In 2021 and 2024, director Denis Villeneuve adapted Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi epic "Dune" to the big screen in a pair of expansive (and expensive) live-action feature films. "Dune," as its many readers can tell you, is overwhelmingly complicated, requiring a special glossary of terms. 

The book is set tens of thousands of years in the future and surrounds a war over control of the planet Arrakis, known to a mysterious desert-dwelling people called the Fremen and the only known source of a valuable spice called melange. In the first "Dune" novel, the key sides vying for control over Arrakis are the gentle House Atreides and the wicked House Harkonnen. Both sides are being variously manipulated by the galaxy's emperor, Shaddam IV, as well as insidious psychic witches known as the Bene Gesserit.

"Dune" had previously been adapted to the big screen by David Lynch in 1984, and was turned into a pair of TV miniseries in 2000 and in 2003. Villeneuve's versions, however, were gigantic box office hits, and even earned a lot of attention from Oscars voters; the first "Dune" was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won six.

Rebecca Ferguson played Lady Jessica in Villeneuve's "Dune" movies, a former Bene Gesserit and current co-head of House Atreides. Over the two "Dune" films, she would use her witchy influence to manipulate the Fremen, leading them to see her son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) as their messiah. Villeneuve's film is about real-world sociopolitical influence over resource allocation, and the ways religion is often wielded for unsavory political ends.

There was one scene in the first "Dune" when Lady Jessica was being kidnapped, hauled on board a futuristic flying machine called an ornithopter. Jessica was handcuffed and stuffed into a tiny cargo hold, unable to move. It seems Ferguson dreaded filming that particular scene because, as she revealed in a 2021 article with EW, she's legitimately claustrophobic. 

Halfway through the first "Dune," House Atreides is ousted from its comfy position as rulers of Arrakis by an attack by House Harkonnen, and many members of the family are killed. Jessica is in the middle of being kidnapped (along with Paul) when she's thrown into the ornithopter mentioned above. Ferguson knows that she is claustrophobic, and can only play scenes in tight, cramped spaces if she knows there's a hatch or escape route which she can access. 

For "Dune," however, Ferguson knew that, because of the nature of the scene, there wouldn't be any way to end the scene herself. This meant that she would have to face her fears head-on. In at least one take, though, Ferguson admitted to panicking and breaking out of the ornithopter set just to catch a breath. She described the experience like this: 

"I can't be locked in. [...] On every set, I always have to make sure that if they lock me into something, there needs to be an out. [...] In the ornithopter, there was a moment when I panicked, and I literally took my foot and just kicked the door out. I needed to know I could get out."

Despite the moment of panic, it sounds as if Ferguson was able to complete the scene without any further moments of fear.  (Fear is the mind killer, after all.) It also sounds like the rest of the film's shoot wasn't nearly as fraught, with the biggest additional struggles coming from the heat and sandiness of the Jordanian deserts. 

It remains to be seen if "Dune: Part Two" will be nominated for any Academy Awards. It was, however, one of 2024's biggest hits, making over $714 million worldwide. So it wins either way.