Emily Watson and Olivia Williams talk about real-life sisterhood in ‘Dune: Prophecy’

British stars Emily Watson and Olivia Williams have joined forces in Max’s “Dune: Prophecy,” the prequel series to the blockbuster “Dune” movies with deeper themes of women in power and the influence they’re capable of wielding.

Set over 10,000 years before the birth of Paul Atreides, a messianic figure in the Known Universe, “Prophecy” centers on the early times of the Bene Gesserit, a secretive sisterhood whose political, genetic and mystical powers would eventually give rise to Paul.

Now streaming on Max, the show’s story begins with the Harkonnen sisters — Valya (Emily) and her younger sibling Tula (Olivia) — acting as leaders of Bene Gesserit, wherein the former exhausts ways to get one of their “sisters” become the Empress of the Known Universe. As “Dune” fans would know, the Harkonnens are the primary villains in the movies. So through “Dune: Prophecy,” it would be intriguing to find out what roles these sisters have in shaping the legacy and future of the House Harkonnen.

The STAR recently had a virtual interview with the esteemed actresses and what fun it was talking to them. They said they never expected two “women in their 50s” leading the charge of a highly anticipated show.

Avoiding spoilers, they teased about the “charm” of their characters. Olivia quipped, “I think my character has a conscience, so that’s what makes her, I think, slightly more forgivable. But she still does terrible things, even if she feels bad about it.”

As for Emily, she said, “I think Valya has that sense of a charismatic leader who knows how to recruit people. Because she had a charismatic leader tell her when she was young and vulnerable, ‘You’re very special and you’re very powerful,’ and she believed it. And it’s a dangerous thing to do.

“And that’s how she brings people into the sisterhood — people who have secrets and who have things that they need protecting. It’s a great recruiting tool.”

When asked about any personal touches that they incorporated into their characters, Olivia mused, “When Tula’s really angry, there’s a muscle that goes off in her cheek. I’ve been told by my husband and children that that is a moment when, you know, to be scared.”

Emily added, “I think that I have a sort of shark eye thing that happens when I get really, really annoyed. The light goes out of my eyes. There’s definitely a lot of Valya in that.”

Here are more excerpts from the intimate virtual roundtable with fellow Asian press.

On their reactions when first offered the roles:

Olivia: “I didn’t realize how significant it was in the world of sci-fi until a man who was fitting my television — I told him I was playing Tula Harkonnen — and he knelt down at my feet, which in the UK isn’t a regular form of greeting. I thought I’d better take this job very seriously. Fortunately, my agent told me that Emily would be playing my big sister. So I rang her up and she explained the plot to me, which was a great asset.”

Emily: “Oh, very intimidated by the hugeness of the ‘Dune’ kind of fan universe and the complicated worlds that exist within it and the massive time frame. But once we got into the weeds of it, it was just very human. And these were sisters with intense sibling carry-on in the way that we all have. And in a family situation that was full of trauma and rage-fueled desire to get out of there and make something of themselves.”

On working with each other again:

Emily: “Just a thrill. We’ve known each other since the ‘90s. We were at the Royal Shakespeare Company together, when we were, you know, whippersnappers. And here we are. We never would have expected at that time that two women in our 50s would be leading a major TV show like this, but that’s how things are now, and it’s great.”

Olivia: “We first met sitting on the grass outside a pub called the Dirty Duck in Stratford on Avon. And then we had a strange middle period where we met in the bar of the Four Seasons in Los Angeles when we were making separate big movies. And here we are finally together in the same room in the same TV show. It’s great. Couldn’t have predicted it.”

On preparations for roles as Harkonnen sisters:

Olivia: “Well, Emily had the brilliant idea of meeting at the National Portrait Gallery in London, where there are the great portraits of the Tudor dynasty from our British history. So Elizabeth I, her sister Bloody Mary, and her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, and that strange mixture of loving family and inherited grudges that end in beheadings and betrayals. Tactical marriages to kings or emperors from other countries and religions to try and gain dominance seem to have a huge relevance for the project we were undertaking.”

Emily: “And also just finding a human way into this story because the ‘Dune’ universe is so massive and a bit overwhelming. But actually, in the middle of this is a very, very messed-up family with a traumatic past and two very powerful young women who are trying to escape from that, and channeling this rage and this energy into this project of the sisterhood, which is very powerful and quite dangerous.

“But they feel — as many kinds of religious institutions do — not that it’s particularly religious as such, but those kinds of cult leadership situations. People feel utterly righteous and that the end justifies the means, and they feel very empowered by it. And mayhem usually ensues.”

On real sisterhood on set with rest of the cast playing Bene Gesserit:

Olivia: “That was so much fun. Definitely so much fun. I mean, we had an amazing Chloe Lee, who, at the beginning of the shoot, was 17, so she still needed a chaperone. So her grandmother was there. So that was like two extremes, the child and the grandma.

“And then there were women with young children, and then there’s us with our teenagers, and we were just making sure everybody was happy. We’d have, you know, tea parties and drinks parties.”

Emily: “There was a lot of singing, a lot of dancing, a lot of just mad capery going on.”

Olivia: “Oh yeah. Budapest (set location) was rocking to the sand of the sisterhood.”

On most memorable filming moment:

Olivia: “There were these incredible scenes we shot that are briefly referred to where we’re training the acolytes. We had this beautiful sort of martial arts stroke, yoga sequence called the Prana Bindu, which our acolytes had to perform in their beautiful white martial arts costumes in a quarry.

“And they put fire engine rain on them. They had a wind machine that was the engine propeller from an airplane. It was a really hot day and then just very extreme. We got to stand under an umbrella and watch them get wet and cold and blown about. Watching our fellow actors and all the crew suffering these appalling conditions while we sat and observed. That was a memorable day. My conscience is still struggling with that one (laughter).”

Emily: “I loved the day when we shot the gathering of the Landsraad with the Emperor, the Empress and all the nobles there. Just this sense of this very powerful center of the universe and all the machinations that are going on there. That was really fun to do.”