FRANK HERBERT’S CHILDREN OF DUNETHE SARANDON FACTOR
Two years later, Casting Director LYNN KRESSEL called Sarandon's agent to ask if she was interested in the part of Princess Wensicia in Children of Dune. Sarandon's agent was initially skeptical of the match, but showed Ms. Sarandon the script. The response was quick in coming. She liked the script and the role and wanted to meet the director. As Greg Yaitanes was heavily involved in pre-production in Prague, they had to settle for a series of trans-Atlantic telephone calls, including one with screenwriter John Harrison. Yaitanes recalls, "I got an e-mail from Richard saying that Susan wanted to talk to me on the phone. It was the night I was planning on proposing to my girlfriend. This totally put a wrench in my plans. I postponed getting engaged for one day and talked to Susan that night for a solid hour. She knew Richard felt I was ready to take on a much bigger film than my prior work. We didn't even speak of the movie! She just wanted to get a feel for the kind of person I was. We bonded immediately." Yaitanes continued, "The great thing about Susan is that she really has a passion for the books. She had a great perspective on her character and wound up adding emphasis to certain motives for her character's actions. She wanted to make the evil of her character real, and as a result, she produced a diabolical character who believes in her heart that her cause is right." John Harrison also notes that Sarandon has never played an evil villain before - an area very familiar to the writer. He got his start as an actor playing an evil zombie in George A. Romero's now classic Dawn of the Dead. "Frankly, I loved working with Susan in the pre-production period because she had a lot of insightful things to say about her character. Princess Wensicia is the character we all agreed could be the focal point of the evil side of the story. It would have been appropriate to make Alia the central heavy because, after all, she's prey to evil forces beyond her control. As vile and evil as she behaves under those influences, I was reluctant to make her 'the real bad guy.' Wensicia, on the other hand, is naturally greedy, vindictive, and ruthless. "There's this wonderful scene near the end of the mini," Harrison continues, "about which Susan asked me 'wouldn't it be great if Lady Jessica and Wensicia could just lock eyes with a clear understanding that even though they're on opposite sides, they are both victims of the same tragedy?' That was there in the script to some extent, but because of the way she wanted to play it, I elaborated upon it. And that's what you want! I love working with actors. That collaboration is crucial. We were lucky to have such extraordinary actors."
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