Dune: Prophecy star Josh Heuston on living up to the legacy of Frank Herbert and Denis Villeneuve

The photos aren’t on his Instagram but Josh Heuston swears there are pictures of him in elf ears.

Heuston, an actor and model, is part of the ensemble cast of Dune: Prophecy, a prequel series to Denis Villeneuve’s movie adaptations of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novels. It’s a complex story of royal houses battling for resources and power, in a world with technology beyond our own.

Heuston, whose best known role previously was as Dusty in the rebooted Heartbreak High, was introduced to the imaginative world of Dune by his grandfather when he was a kid, along with the likes of Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. He played World of Warcraft.

“I was a geeky kid, I’m still a geek,” he told The Nightly.

“I was such a massive fantasy and sci-fi fan as a kid. I grew up going to Lord of the Rings conventions.” Hence the elf ears.

Admittedly, he didn’t read Dune when he was a child but once he booked the role in Dune: Prophecy as Constantine, the illegitimate son of the Emperor, he deep-dived into all of it, sleuthing on DuneWiki where the lore is king.

There is a lot — sand worms, royal bloodlines, multigenerational vendettas than span millenniums, secret sects working to manipulate political events, and the rest. As any Dune fan knows, it gets weird, really weird.

That suits Heuston, who said his favourite stories are the expansive ones such as Star Wars or Rocky, the sagas that go for decades across multiple movies or seasons.

Dune certainly has a devoted following and Heuston felt the weight of it.

“There’s a level of apprehension going into any project with an existing fan base,” he explained. “The films were widely successful and Dune lore in general is a super revered topic.

“But Alison (Schapker), our showrunner, and Jordan (Goldberg), a writer and producer, have encyclopaedic knowledge of the universe. So, any questions we had, we could go to them and they have an answer for it.”

There was also a Dune bible, a glossary for everything in the timeline of Dune: Prophecy — which explores the foundation of the Bene Gesserit, a sect of women with powers such as the ability to control people’s actions with their voice, and who work towards a manipulated future by intentionally breeding royal lines.

The show is set 10,000 years before the events of Villeneuve’s film and Herbert’s original 1965 novel, which Heuston argued is one of the most influential cultural texts in sci-fi.

“In Star Wars, there’s the sand planet (like Dune’s Arrakis) and they have the Force, which is similar to the Voice, and in Terminator, there’s the AI reference, and that’s the same in Dune as well.

“You can see lots of things have come from this starting place.”

It’s not just the legacy of Herbert’s creation that Dune: Prophecy is in conversation with, but also Villeneuve’s two Dune films. The first one won six gongs during its Oscars year, all for technical achievements, which sets a high standard for its smaller-screen sibling.

It didn’t bend to the pressure. The series, which was filmed in Budapest in 2023, relied on practical sets and effects, just as Villeneuve had. When large, 4K TV sets sit in most people’s lounge rooms, you can’t cheat on a project just because it’s made for TV.

“Villeneuve is known for those grand, establishing landscapes, like in Arrivals and Blade Runner 2049 as well, he’s one of the best at it. So, then coming into this series, there was a lot of expectations for that as well,” Heuston said.

“The credit goes to the set designers and the props and costume department. The throne rooms, everything, it’s all practical.

“You walk in and it’s like a three-storey high building inside this warehouse. Or you go into one of the suspensor cars and you sit in the chair and the chair is supposed to pivot, but there is someone with a remote control moving it. It’s very practical and tangible and immersive.”

Heuston compares his character, Constantine, to Prince Hal, William Shakespeare’s young Henry V — who, in his wayward youth, moves through the lower echelons of society, having fun and making mistakes.

Due to his illegitimacy, Constantine similarly moves between strata, whether that be at his father’s side in front of the court, with his half-sister Princess Ynez, with whom he shared a childhood trauma, or with the rapscallions at the bar or at the spice stand.

“He’s got so many flaws, which I find makes him interesting,” Heuston said. “He has different facades and masks that he wears in different environments.

“His destiny is quite fragile, and growing up in that pressure cooker, he turns to lots of vices, whether it be sex, drugs or alcohol.”

It’s a vicious circle. Constantine is always trying to gain his father’s approval, and when he doesn’t get it he turns to those vices and makes mistakes which put him further away from his dad.

“He should probably go to therapy or something, but instead of does other things,” Heuston said, with a laugh.

Dune: Prophecy is likely to be a big deal once it’s released this week, tapping into the in-built fervour for Herbert’s stories as well as Villeneuve’s films. There is definitely anticipation for it. Does Heuston think his work on it will open some doors?

“I don’t know, hopefully good ones.

“For now, at least, I’m riding this wave and seeing where it goes. It’s dangerous to have too many expectations and preconceived ideas of what could happen after the show. It’s better to just let it do its own thing.”

Spoken more like Prince Hal than a Bene Gesserit sister.

Dune: Prophecy is streaming on Binge with new episodes weekly on Mondays