Robert Pattinson Says Zendaya Talked Him Into Dune: Part Three
Pattinson plays the villain Scytale after asking his Drama co-star one blunt question on set.
Robert Pattinson has a simple explanation for how he ended up in Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" trilogy: he asked Zendaya how to get in.
A Question Between Takes
The two had already wrapped scenes together on "The Drama," the A24 black comedy from Kristoffer Borgli that cast Pattinson as an anxious groom opposite Zendaya, before "Dune: Part Three" existed as an offer for either of them. As Pattinson told it, he put the question to her directly on that set: how does someone get cast in one of those Dune movies? Slashfilm and ComicBook.com both reported that the call came a few months later, and that Pattinson credits Zendaya with having a hand in it.
"The Drama" premiered in Los Angeles on March 17 and reached theaters through A24 on April 3, ahead of Pattinson's own start on the Dune set. It is a small, strange film to have set up a much larger one, and Pattinson has not been shy about saying so.
Photo: PhilipRomano · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Scytale Enters the Story
In "Dune: Part Three," Pattinson plays Scytale, a character GeekTyrant and ComicBook.com both flagged as dangerous to Paul Atreides' rule rather than an ally of it. Villeneuve's third film moves the story into territory closer to Frank Herbert's "Dune Messiah," where Paul's reign as emperor is no longer secure and the people around him start working against him instead of for him. Deadline's early plot coverage named Zendaya's Chani and Anya Taylor-Joy among the returning and new cast facing that shift alongside Timothée Chalamet's Paul.
Pattinson has played villains before in this stretch of his career — Variety's trailer coverage pointed to "The Odyssey" as another recent example — and he has said he was drawn to a Dune role that let him work against Chalamet's emperor rather than beside him.
