Rebecca Ferguson Is the Real Star of 'Dune'

Rebecca Ferguson is tucked into a corner at an institutional chain restaurant in the chichi London suburb of Richmond (it has its own palace and a park with wild deer). The actress has a knack for playing steely, stoic women, but in person, she is disarmingly funny. When we receive our food, she leans into my recorder to describe lunch as if she were hosting a cooking show. “A beautiful butternut squash dressed with something that looks like it should be scraped into the bin,” she says, cackling. “People have said I have a regal air.”

In Dune, Ferguson, 38, plays Lady Jessica, a concubine and member of the Bene Gesserit, a sect of women who, through mental conditioning, have the superhuman ability to manipulate others and influence humanity for their own benefit. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the film has an all-star cast, with Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and Stellan Skarsgård, but in many ways, it is Ferguson’s movie. As part of the Bene Gesserit, Jessica was supposed to birth a daughter who would become a super-being (she is an integral part of the sect’s breeding program). Instead, she disobeyed them and became mother to the gentle and heroic Paul Atreides (Chalamet), whom she pushes to emotional and physical extremes, subjecting him to a test that causes blinding pain and training him to use “the Voice,” a type of mind control he resists learning at first. The film hinges on their mother-son relationship, and Ferguson balances her character’s maternal anxieties and soldierlike toughness with ease.

If this scientist is right about cocker-spaniel-size praying mantises roaming the Earth 1 million years from now, well, we’re glad we won’t be around to see it.​ Speaking of predictions, this is what restaurants of the future might look like. How did we miss John Hinckley Jr. joining Twitter to promote his music? Robert Durst has been charged with murder in the death of his first wife, Kathie Durst, nearly four decades after she disappeared. What is it about Wes Anderson that draws stars like Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton again and again, you ask? They’ll tell you. And make time this weekend to read Esquire’s feature about one brutal year on a hotshot firefighting crew amid the worst fire season on record in the U.S.

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