BRAVE NEW WORLD

MARK STRONG, STAR OF THE MARQUEE HBO SERIES DUNE: PROPHECY, OFFERS AN INVALUABLE PRELUDE TO ITS DETAILED AND ENCHANTING WORLD.

- INDRAN PARAMASIVAM

A MAN, RESPLENDENTLY REGAL in stature, is not difficult to pick out in a crowd. Mark Strong, an actor par excellence, fits that description with sublime and commanding ease, even as he fields questions from journalists over Zoom. Responding to a query about whether he is anxious about the newly minted series measuring up to the success of Denis Villeneuve’s spellbinding contributions to the Dune universe, his answer is characteristically awe-inspiring: “Not at all”.

In the world of Prophecy, set 10,000 years before the ascension of the Paul Atreides, which the Villeneuve films relate, Strong (a great exemplar of one’s surname intimating the essence of one’s destiny), plays the character of Emperor Javicco Corrino, who, according to the press material, is “a man from a great line of war-time emperors... called upon to govern the Imperium and manage a fragile peace”.

Even in trailers that herald the big reveal to come, the gravitas with which he portrays Corrino is palpable, a performance heightened by the tension that suffocates the scale of this new and sprawling world.

With the stakes for science fiction raised in a cerebral and aesthetically boundary-blasting way, Strong gets into the what, why, and how.

What drew you to the world of Dune: Prophecy, as developed by Alison Schapker?