Dune: Prophecy star Chloe Lea (Lila) describes enduring the horrific spice agony

The second episode of HBO's new show Dune: Prophecy, "Two Wolves," just aired. The highlight is a sequence involving a young Bene Gesserit acolyte named Lila (Chloe Lea) who ingests a poisonous substance in an attempt to become a reverend mother. This is what the Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) does in Dune: Part Two. At the end of the process, called the spice agony, the reverence mother is able to access the memories of her ancestors, making her privy to a wealth of knowledge.

But there are dangers. The ancestors may want to do more than just share their knowledge with you; they may want to take over your body and live again. Jessica comes out of her experience alright, but Lila is not so lucky. While she's in the spice agony, we see her overcome by the specters of her ancestors. It's a terrifying sequence. Afterwards, she appears comatose.

Along with other journalists, we got to talk to several of the cast members, including Chloe Lea. Slashfilm asked her to talk about the sequence where Lila enters the spice agony, never to emerge.

"There was a lot of different setups," Lea remembered. "The main thing that I thought was really effective for me is all the SAs (supporting actors, aka extras), and some of them are dancers, so their physicality was really cool to play off. And it was really creepy. They were like zombies, almost. And then there was one bit that I thought was really cool where the camera was literally rigged onto my body. And it was right in front of my face, and I was in the middle of all these of all these ancestors, and I like spinning around and screaming for hours on end and I found that really fun. It was really cool the way it was set up, and we were literally in a freezing cold cave that was in the middle of Hungary. It was insane."

It was definitely a memorable sequence, taking us inside the spice agony in a way no Dune movie ever has. And I liked all the horror movie influences.

New episodes of Dune: Prophecy will drop on Sunday nights on HBO and Max. This first season of the series will only last for six episodes, so we're already nearly at the halfway point.

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