We talk to Dune: Prophecy star Emma Canning about Tula's deadly choices (Exclusive)

The third episode of Dune: Prophecy, "Sisterhood Above All," is in the can. This one took us into the past as we explored the backstories of Valya and Tula Harkonnen, seeing the traumas that shaped their lives before they became the leaders of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. The both of them were deeply affected by the death of their brother Griffin Harkonnen, who was killed by a member of the powerful Atreides family. Valya was determined to get revenge, but it was Tula who delivered it, starting a relationship with young Orry Atreides only to kill him and his entire family during a forest retreat.

We got to talk to Emma Canning, who played Young Tula in the episode, and who will be back for more later! Check out our conversation below:

WinterIsComing: How did you get involved in Dune: Prophecy?

Emma Canning: "I auditioned! I did a tape, did a recall and didn't know very much at all. There's a lot of kind of secrecy and NDAs and all that stuff with a project this size. I had kind of dummy sides to work from. I can't remember what Tula's name was but it wasn't Tula. It was something else with a T, maybe Tara. And then worked with Anna, our first director, over Zoom. She was wonderful and really playful. I kind of left not knowing what I had done or how it had gone. And only then...Alison, our wonderful exec producer, called me and walked me through the story and then through Tula's specifically. That was pretty crazy."

WiC: I did see the twist coming with Tula, where she's with the Atredies, with her boyfriend, and then kills everyone.

Emma: "Not everyone! She does spare one person."

WiC: What's your take on that? Why does she spare the kid after shoving a deadly poison into her fiancé's neck?

Emma: "I think it's a lot of flash decisions. She's kind of managing this crisis. Obviously she has really connected with him. We've seen that in previous scenes. I think she's seen a lot of herself in him and certainly his position within the family, kind of being at the bottom of the pecking order. So there is that connection there.

"I do think even her decision to follow through with Orry's murder is a conflicted one. I don't think it's clear that she's going to follow through. I think she feels cornered into doing that, and I think probably worries that he's a threat to herself more than anything else. And I suppose she doesn't feel threatened by [the kid] and kind of just wants a moment alone."

WiC: Getting into her psychology, it's such a huge thing to pull off. Do you think she did it because she wants revenge as badly as her sister? Do you think she was trying to impress her sister? What's your take on how she got to the point where she is willing to do this?

Emma: "You know, we see early on her literally say to Valya, 'an eye for an eye will never be enough.' And I think in that moment she does believe that. And we don't get to see it but they scheme together. Griffin was our brightest light, [so] who is that equal in the Atreides clan? And that is Orry Atreides. So she goes out and she is now kind of thinking maybe an eye for an eye will be enough. And then I think as she gets emboldened, I think she gets this sudden independence and a sudden sense of confidence. I think she kind of starts to see this as a chance to really prove herself. And she sees this opportunity and she thinks actually, 'I don't think an eye for an eye is enough, but now in a different way.'

"It's kind of feeding itself. [I]n some ways, I think she has been groomed to really seek Valya's approval. But because of this grooming really believes that she's acting of her own accord and her own desires. So...she's both chasing approval and kind of unknowingly being manipulated into this situation."

WiC: in terms of your acting, were you pitching your performance to resemble Olivia Williams' at all? Or are you just kind of doing your own approach to it?

Emma: "No, I utterly had Olivia in mind. Obviously I'm Irish, so I'm not using my own accent. That was really useful actually because she gave me a very specific template then to base the voice off — not THE voice, but mine. So that was kind of already a change I had to make, and calibrate towards Olivia. She obviously had extremely difficult imaginative work to do, because she wasn't playing these scenes at the Atreides camp, but she wasn't any kind of lived memory of that. So she had to build all of that for herself, and obviously then also track how the aftershock of that might tremor through the rest of Tula's life [and] shape her as a person.

"Olivia had begun work first, she'd started shooting first. So she'd kind of gotten some brush strokes down, let's say. And the production gave me a scene packet just to see some of the work that she'd been doing, and that was really useful in kind of an osmosis sense, like I didn't watch it looking out for anything specifically; it gave me a really good grounding in both the tone of the world of Dune, but also the tone that Olivia was creating, and also a shape of Tula that if I ever felt a little stuck or maybe a little lost, I would think of and try and [say]. 'Okay, on this take, I'm just going to remember this thing that I had noticed?'"

WiC: Did you meet with Olivia to talk about it or just get the packet?

Emma: "Yeah, we got to meet...We did have kind of a concentrated and intentional meeting at the studio. And we just spoke about Tula and family dynamics, and she was incredibly generous in how she spoke about Tula with me. She really shared her with me. It wasn't Tula as seen by Olivia. Tula was on the table for the pair of us to just kind of talk about in circle."

WiC: There's a lot you're doing in these episodes. You're on the snow planet of Lankiveil, you're at the Bene Gesserit school, you're on the planet where you kill all the Atreides. How did working on the show of this scale compared to other things you've done, like Masters of the Air?

Emma: "This was the first time in my career that I really had a storyline that I had to carry. So that was a huge learning experience, and very bolstering to feel trusted to do that. I'm so thankful that I had kind of racked up about three years of being on sets of a very similar size, where I did have scenes and work to do, but it wasn't my story. The role was within something. So all of those projects beforehand let me learn how a set worked and how to calibrate a performance for a camera, what to expect when you walk on set, whose name you should remember, and how to conserve energy and just all of the things you don't think about when you decide to become an actor, and certainly not something you're taught.

"I'm classically trained, I trained in London. It's so theater-based. You get so many skills as to how to approach a script and a character and how to feel emboldened about the choices in your gut about a character, but the craft of working on camera and onscreen...you learn on the job. And I think I'm someone who benefits from wading in slowly. Otherwise I'm just like, 'I can't, there's too much to take in right now.'"

WiC: I know you can't spoil anything, but maybe you can tease something. Does Young Tula come back?

Emma: She most certainly does come back. Yeah, she does.

Thanks very much to Emma Canning for talking to us! New episodes of Dune: Prophecy air Sunday nights on HBO and Max.

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