Amid the sacred stone walls of the Sisterhood’s fortress-like headquarters on the planet Wallach IX, the acolytes of Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson) and Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen (Olivia Williams) in “Dune: Prophecy” struggle to make sense of the strange happenings of their order as forces internal and external try to destroy their influential heritage.
Sister Jen is one of the foremost academy students, who displays an uncanny level of common sense, uncensored intuition, and outspokenness that might make her one of the frontrunners to claim a leadership role should tragedy befall her stoic-but-flawed mentors, Valya and Tula.
Actress Faoileann Cunningham, who had a brief role in director Robert Eggers’ Viking saga “The Northman,” portrays this headstrong apprentice amid an incredible ensemble cast that allowed her to significantly stretch her range in HBO/Max’s six-episode prequel miniseries. After being taken under Tula’s wing and entrusted to harbor dangerous secrets in regards to Lila’s (Chloe Lea) resurrection and recovery, Sister Jen has come to the forefront of this remarkable series to assert herself in myriad ways that will likely resonate into the newly-announced second season.
“It was very fun,” Cunningham tells Space.com. “Obviously they’re challenging scenes but working with those guys was so fun and we’d obviously built up a good rapport across the whole series. To be honest, sometimes those things are easier than the big set pieces where there’s a million people on set for a day, so you can just connect to the other actor and do what you need to do. I really enjoyed it, and it was nice that we shot those scenes in sequence which made it a lot easier. Chloe and I are very good friends, and the same with Olivia. So it was very joyful. A lot is happening so you have to reset and go, ‘Okay, I didn’t know that five seconds ago.'”
The intense sequences down in the bowels of the Sisterhood’s stronghold with Sister Lila possessed by the deceased Mother Raquella, who’s trying to dissect reasons for Kasha’s death and discover the source of Desmond Hart’s powers, carried a style and tone reminiscent of old Universal horror movies such as “The Bride of Frankenstein.”
“When we go into the cave Lila is in a lot of pain and is clearly grappling with the ancestors so I think wrapping that up as far as we could possible go was our aim in the safest way possible but really pushing that with the stunt coordinators,” she notes. “The minute that door opens it’s a fire that’s happening. And in the following scenes, it was really nice because we hadn’t seen in so long that really close connection between Jen and Lila that was there in the early episodes. They were head-to-head in bunk beds to each other so they were always able to have those conversations. After that, it was just really connecting to what had gone before and bringing it right down to two friends filling each other in on everything.”
Cunningham admits to the complexity of Sister Jen’s journey in “Dune: Prophecy,” something that required her to inhabit the role with facets of her own personality.
“I think initially what I loved about her was this jester quality, setting people up to fall or setting people up for questions they really didn’t want to answer, or playing with people’s own perception of truth,” she explains. “That was fun because obviously as an actor you could switch off what parts of those things were really sincere and what parts weren’t. But that kind of runs right up to the end of the season. We never really know where she sits in terms of her loyalty, what she wants to get from this, who she trusts and who she doesn’t. And that’s very appealing. I’m also quite a cerebral person so it was nice to try and find parts of yourself in there. That firm footedness and reactive nature, but equally both on a personal level and on a character level, maturing through the season into being able to hold lots of conflicting ideas.
“When you’re on set with Olivia and Emily you’ve got to run quicker than you’ve ever run in your life, and likewise for the younger cast. Every single person is astonishingly talented and incredibly hardworking. It made me do my homework times a million. There’s so many moving parts to the story, you have to become very refined in each moment of what you’re trying to convey. It’s all very very focused work because otherwise, I think we would lose the audience since there’s so much going on. God only knows where Jen is headed, but it’s very exciting.”
“Dune: Prophecy’s” six episodes are all now available on HBO and streaming on Max.
