Josh Brolin, the veteran actor who plays Gurney Halleck in Dune: Part Two, has shared his admiration for his young co-star Timothée Chalamet, who plays the protagonist Paul Atreides in the sci-fi epic.
In an interview with Digital Spy, Brolin said that he was impressed by Chalamet’s talent and maturity as an actor, and that he witnessed his transformation from an innocent newcomer to a confident star during the filming of the two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel.
He said that he felt a “strange parallel” between his relationship with the young actor and his character’s relationship with Paul, who is a noble heir who becomes a rebel leader in a futuristic interstellar society.
“He (Timothée) had done a bunch of independent films and didn’t know what this world was, he felt the weight but he showed up. And he matured quickly. And he continues to mature…..Every couple of months he is a different person, so I feel I’ve gone through a lot of things with him personally along with professionally.”
Brolin praised Chalamet’s performance as Paul, and felt that he had captured the essence and spirit of the character.
“You get pushed back into regression with adolescent love, and that starts to take over your selves, and then you have to think in a bigger design…..I feel we go through it every day, he goes through in this kind of monumental way because it’s Dune and it’s a bigger story and you’re specifying certain things. But I think it’s something that everybody can identify with, which makes it a really fun movie to watch. And it also makes it a movie as profound as you want it to be.”
Josh Brolin’s comments come after he released a poetry book, Dune: Exposures, which features original poems he wrote on the set of Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two, as well as behind-the-scenes photos by Director of Photography Greig Fraser. He said that he wrote the poems as a way of expressing his admiration and appreciation for his co-stars, especially Chalamet, who inspired him.
However, he also clarified that he did not have any romantic feelings for the Call Me By Your Name actor, as some internet users speculated, but was simply a fan of his work and his personality.
