Go Behind the Scenes of Dune: Part Two with Babs Olusanmokun
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“Being on this set was incredible,” Babs Olusanmokun says of Dune: Part Two, which is in theaters now. “You get to go to these incredible places—from Budapest to Abu Dhabi—and be part of these amazing places in nature and tell a beautiful story using them, which is just fantastic.”
Olusanmokun plays the Fremen warrior Jamis in the movie, and as his character died in a battle with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) in the first of director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune installments, it wasn’t guaranteed that he’d return for the second. “Denis point blank told me at the end of Part One, ‘you're gone,’” Olusanmokun says. “So, for him to switch gears before we finished Part One and say, ‘I want you back when I do Part Two’ was a special thing.”
For Olusanmokun, who’ll next star in the upcoming Guy Ritchie film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, the joy of making Dune wasn’t only what he got to do on camera, but the experienced he had behind the scenes as well. “You look at these landscapes, and are like, wow, I am really just a speck of dust,” he says.
Here, Olusanmokun opens his camera roll to T&C to share a behind-the-scenes look at Dune: Part Two, and the moments that didn’t make it on screen.
"Here I am with Roger Yuan, who plays Lanville in the movie and was also our fight choreographer. The day before this photo was taken, I was like, 'man, we've got to go see Petra,' because we were in Aqaba, Jordan, just two hours or so by car. So, we went to Petra and walked through this civilization from a this time way, way before us. It was just glorious—the color of the stones, the beautiful landscape, the architecture, they've done a wonderful job of keeping it together. It really reminds you of your relationship to the history of this Earth of ours.
"This is from a scene we shot in Abu Dhabi, about three hours in the desert. It was just another incredible gorgeous day, and I think this might have been quite early in the morning; we'd get there early to make sure we got the light in a certain way. We filmed it on top of a massive sand dune, and if you looked around you, it was nothing but beautiful sand—and it was glorious."
"We built this cavern and shot in it in Budapest. It was one of those things you walk into and are like, how did they do this? There's such fantastic artistry that goes into this work."
"We had this sort of green room in the desert, where it was sweltering hot. We'd go here to cool down, and in this case I put on some music to keep me ready before venturing out. I have a collection of music I like to listen to, everything from the soundtrack of The Thin Red Line'to "Symphony No. 5' by Mahler, all pieces that keep me in a certain kind of place."
"I'd probably just tossed by earphones to the side before this moment was captured; I tend to keep my music close to me until right before the camera is rolling. Denis is a serious artist and a master filmmaker, so I'm not looking for chatter before going into a scene. I want to focus and bring something that Denis is looking for."
"Getting that scarf tied around me properly was not easy to do! There are the costumers taking care of me here before a scene with Timothée, where our characters reminisce. We were all taking pictures of the sets; Zendaya is out of frame somewhere with her cool vintage camera doing the same."
"This would've been part of the burial scene. You can see the material to the left side of the picture, so this is when they're about to wrap the body. I actually trained for this and worked on holding my breath for quite a bit of time so that when my body is wrapped the camera doesn't capture any breathing. They wanted me to give the camera at least 30 seconds of that. It was an experience to go in there and not panic and just still oneself and make sure we got that moment beautifully on camera."
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