Dune: Prophecy’s Travis Fimmel Never Thought He Was Playing a Bad Guy

Photo: HBO

It’s a bit foolish to talk about good guys and bad guys in Dune: Prophecy, a series with no obvious heroes. But that also makes it one without any clear villains, too. Desmond Hart began the series as a soldier freshly returned from a battle on Arrakis with mysterious powers; by the end of the first episode, he uses them to immolate both a Bene Gesserit truthsayer and a child betrothed to Emperor Javicco Corrino’s daughter Ynez. But in the final moments of the season, we learn Desmond is patient zero for a “thinking machine�–powered virus sweeping through the Bene Gesserit. And, oh yeah, he’s the secret son of Olivia Williams’s Tula, with whom he shares a brief but tender reunion before having her arrested. All this could be whiplash-inducing if Travis Fimmel’s performance didn’t invest Desmond with both menace and sympathy, stemming his vision for the character as a champion of the unrepresented masses.

Desmond is such a mysterious character — maybe a little less mysterious by the end of the season, but not that much. How much did you know about the character before you started filming? Did you know where the story was going?
I pretty well knew the whole thing but some details changed because of the writers’ and actors’ strike. There would have been a few more episodes, so some stuff got truncated because of time issues. But I knew a lot and that’s what intrigued me to do the character, because he wasn’t fully defined. That’s what I loved about the creators on the show. They let you make a lot of decisions. There’s a lot of shows where it’s like, “This is a character. You’ve got no choice.� These guys are so collaborative and I think it makes for a much more interesting on the show.

In the first episode Desmond’s kind of defined by his ability to unnerve people without saying a word. How do you create that energy?
Well you ask for no dialogue, for a start. [Laughs.] But I feel like the more you talk, the more you give away about yourself, the more people can judge you. The second thing is I enjoy playing characters who try to make people wonder what they’re thinking or whether I’m leading them down a wrong path — making them feel like I’m thinking one thing when I’m not. The quiet person in the room — whatever room you’re in, whether it’s a bunch of tough guys or a big business meeting — is the scariest. It’s like, “God, what is he?� The people that speak the least are the ones you should worry about.

At the end of the first episode, Desmond kills a child. That seems like the kind of hole a character can’t really dig himself out of. Yet by the end of the season, once we’ve learned more about his background and motivations, Desmond’s one of the most sympathetic characters on the show. Did you ever worry about completely losing the audience?
I’ve done another similar show where I was asked to severely abuse a child and I said, “There’s not a chance in the world I’m doing that.� And that was some personal reasons as well, not just about the character not being liked. I just don’t want to do that on television. But this one, the stakes are so high and my character’s motivations are so extreme. His goal and what he wants to achieve and what he thinks is best for the universe is that the sacrifice of one individual can save many thousands or millions of people’s lives. It helps when it also causes you as much pain as it causes the person you’re doing it.

With a few bumps along the way, this season tells the story of Desmond’s ascent from a low status soldier to, essentially pulling the strings of the entire empire. Is he improvising his way when he sees opportunity or does he have a plan?
A bit of both. I’ve always felt he was a guy who was representing the hardworking and the common folk. He’s coming into this world that he wants to infiltrate, this world he thinks of as materialistic. It’s similar in politics: People are caught up in their own world in the richest cities or whatever and they forget about the country people, they forget about the hardworking, they forget about even the farmers. They don’t realize what actually makes a universe or a country tick. I’m trying to represent the people who have a dislike for the way the world’s going and who’s in charge and the reasons for the political decisions that occur.

Much of Desmond’s violence is either caused secondhand, by manipulating other people, or in the moments where he uses his mental powers to destroy others. When you’re depicting that sort of violence, is it the same approach as if you were using a gun or a sword?
You have a bit more time with a gun or a sword. It’s a quicker moment. Here, it’s a bit of a slow burn, literally. You have time to think about what you’re doing to the other person. You have time to look the other person in the eye, feel whatever, make him feel the reason why you’re doing it to him. And then you also have time to show that it affects you, that this is not something you’re doing for fun. Your tortured soul is getting a bit of payback for something. You feel very righteous in what you’re doing.

By contrast, when Desmond actually gets to swing into action and raid Mikaela’s bar in the penultimate episode, he seems kind of giddy, like he was waiting for that moment.
Well, he feels like he’s not a one-man army. As a tortured kid and all that, all you’re doing is looking for love. As Desmond, I felt like I was rewarded and somebody was proud of me. That gives you a lot more confidence. Maybe I’m not a loser, maybe I’m not just a weapon for somebody to use all the time. I’ve earned my spot. And then sometimes that confidence in that scene was used against Mikaela because you could see she was a strong woman and I’m going to have fun messing with her and making her feel uncomfortable. I always try to do a lot of stuff from a very childlike place and that was just trying to have a bit of fun.

Desmond can seem kind of childlike.
Some people who don’t have parents or who were abandoned, they stay in that state. And to be fair, all the people I admire in the acting world, they come from a very childlike place. Jack Nicholson is always just a little kid. He’s got so much pain and I just love his mannerisms and the childlike quality he brings to anything, no matter how dark it is.

You have your first scene with Olivia Williams at the end of the finale. What’s your sense of what’s going through Desmond’s head when he realizes who this woman is and has to decide what to do with her?
I think the emotion is a bit too much for him at the moment. He felt that he’d be so angry, and I’m sure he’s visualized exactly what he’d say if he ever comes across his mother. And when that moment comes he’s just a little boy. He just wants his love. I really look forward to doing some scenes with her and exploring that relationship.

Are there any particular parts of his past that you are hoping future seasons will explore?
There’s so many worlds in the Dune universe. I’d love to visit some of that and explore the world of everyday people. Because a lot of the Dune universe you see is the higher class. I’d love to go into a township or a city or where normal people actually live. That would intrigue me.