--- title: 'Robert Pattinson Says Zendaya Talked Him Into Dune: Part Three' type: 'blog post' section: 'Away From Set' standfirst: 'Pattinson plays the villain Scytale after asking his Drama co-star one blunt question on set.' author: 'CinePixo' published: '2026-08-13' updated: '2026-08-13' about_people: - 'Robert Pattinson' - 'Zendaya' about_films: - 'The Drama (2026)' sources: - 'https://centraljersey.com/2026/07/28/dune-part-three-release-date-cast-dunesday/' - 'https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/07/24/the-wild-tom-holland-zendaya-robert-pattinson-acting-triangle-of-2026/' - 'https://eurweb.com/dune-part-three-official-trailer-paul-atreides-robert-pattinson/' - 'https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/why-robert-pattinson-loved-playing-210824550.html' - 'https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/dune-part-three-trailer-sees-robert-pattinson-challenge-timoth%C3%A9e-chalamet-for-the-throne/ar-AA27vonU' - 'https://www.bollywoodhungama.com/news/international/dune-part-three-trailer-out-timothee-chalamet-returns-as-emperor-paul-in-denis-villeneuves-epic-finale/' canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/blog/robert-pattinson-says-zendaya-talked-him-into-dune-part-three' publisher: 'CinePixo' --- # 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.* By CinePixo, 2026-08-13 · Away From 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. ![Zendaya at the NYC Premiere of " The Odyssey " - July 14, 2026](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/db159e6d-15f1-4467-957c-f99c10500a91.webp) *Photo: PhilipRomano · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zendaya-byPhilipRomano9.jpg)* ## 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. ![Actor Robert Pattinson at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/a78da625-5300-4b8d-9397-fdb3b5588cad.webp) ![Zendaya at the NYC Premiere of " The Odyssey " - July 14, 2026](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/116a8dd6-7b0a-48e1-9e72-0f5af3c193d3.webp) *Photos: Harald Krichel · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Pattinson-65806.jpg); PhilipRomano · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zendaya-byPhilipRomano10.jpg)* ## From A24 to Arrakis What makes the story worth telling isn't just the casting itself, it's the order things happened in. Pattinson and Zendaya made a small A24 movie together first, with no Dune role attached to either of them, and the bigger job followed from a conversation that happened because they were already on a set together. Forbes' recent piece on the Holland-Zendaya-Pattinson orbit around this year's slate noted how often these three actors' projects now overlap without being connected on paper — "The Drama" and "Dune: Part Three" are simply the clearest case of one leading into the other. Pattinson's route into "Dune" also says something about how Villeneuve's cast has been assembled across three films: less through open casting calls than through actors who already trust each other bringing in the next one. ![Actor Robert Pattinson at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/33ff792d-b808-44dc-a895-cd0cc8d92cfa.webp) ![Zendaya at the NYC Premiere of " The Odyssey " - July 14, 2026](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/08360526-3608-4060-9b4c-5093c59ef0c7.webp) *Photos: Harald Krichel · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Pattinson-65808.jpg); PhilipRomano · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ZendayaInCrowd-byPhilipRomano.jpg)* ## What Part Three Owes Messiah "Dune: Part Three" is scheduled for December 18. The trailer that Variety and Bollywood Hungama both covered over the summer showed Pattinson's Scytale positioned as a direct challenge to Chalamet's Paul, which lines up with where Herbert's "Dune Messiah" took the character of Paul after the events of the first two films — a ruler whose victory turns out to be the harder half of the story. For Pattinson, it is also a return to the kind of role — quietly threatening, working an angle the hero hasn't spotted yet — that he has built a run of recent performances around. He got there, on his own account, by asking a co-star a direct question on a much smaller set. ## In this piece - [Robert Pattinson](https://cinepixo.com/people/robert-pattinson) - [Zendaya](https://cinepixo.com/people/zendaya) - 2026 · [The Drama](https://cinepixo.com/movies/the-drama-2026) ## Sources - https://centraljersey.com/2026/07/28/dune-part-three-release-date-cast-dunesday/ - https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/07/24/the-wild-tom-holland-zendaya-robert-pattinson-acting-triangle-of-2026/ - https://eurweb.com/dune-part-three-official-trailer-paul-atreides-robert-pattinson/ - https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/why-robert-pattinson-loved-playing-210824550.html - https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/dune-part-three-trailer-sees-robert-pattinson-challenge-timoth%C3%A9e-chalamet-for-the-throne/ar-AA27vonU - https://www.bollywoodhungama.com/news/international/dune-part-three-trailer-out-timothee-chalamet-returns-as-emperor-paul-in-denis-villeneuves-epic-finale/ Every factual claim above is drawn from these. The reading of them is ours. Source: https://cinepixo.com/blog/robert-pattinson-says-zendaya-talked-him-into-dune-part-three Written for CinePixo. Nothing on this page is imported prose.