Who Should Play Dark Twink Feyd-Rautha?

Frank Herbert’s philosophical and religious epic, the Dr. Bronner’s label of its time, is an unlikely source for a rare theatrical hit in the COVID era, but the box office receipts are in and the news is official: America has Dune fever. Some who watched it, however, may have been surprised to find that Denis Villeneuve’s film was, in fact, merely an adaptation of the novel’s first half. That left major plots untouched, as well as significant characters entirely omitted. Above all, the film robs us of even a glance of what is arguably the story’s most buckwild and unhinged character: Feyd-Rautha, the conniving little shit of a nephew to the novel’s major villain, Baron von Harkonnen.

A standard has already been set for this character. Whatever you think of David Lynch’s much-maligned 1984 adaptation, the one element that the film nails is Sting’s endearingly ludicrous performance as Feyd. From the moment he steps out of a steam bath with a shock of Johnny Rotten-esque orange hair, a wild-eyed grin, and what appears to be a Speedo designed by H.R. Giger, Sting emits the kind of demented energy that the rest of the film lacks. Crucially, the rockstar lends the socially climbing Harkonnen the “has a collection of small animal bones in a shoebox” quality that is so central to his personality.

As Legendary Pictures swiftly announced a sequel, speculation is already rampant as to who will take on the role of Feyd, the chaotic evil to Paul’s lawful neutral in the moral alignment chart of Dune’s twinks. For reasons too thoroughly exhausting and galaxy-brained to recap, Paul and Feyd are joined by fate, each placed on a collision course with the other by virtue of their very existences. That makes finding the perfect contrast to Timothée Chalamet's threateningly non-threatening vibe of paramount importance to the artistic (and, we can only assume, financial) success of Dune Part Two: Dune It Again.

With that in mind, here are a few of the more noteworthy names being floated as dream castings, with a pros and cons breakdown of each possibility.

Barry Keoghan

Pros: Off-the-charts “bastard” energy. He is also, in the closest thing Ireland has to a military draft, a trained boxer, which could come in handy for Feyd’s meatiest scene: a climactic hand-to-hand duel with Paul.

Cons: Possibly being locked up as we speak in the Disney vault to await the coming of Eternals 2; may have moral objections to playing a pro-monarchy character.

Bill Skarsgård

Pros: Fans of metatext and Swedes alike will surely delight in Stellan Skarsgård’s son playing his nephew. IT proved that Skarsgård the Younger has what it takes to honor Sting’s legacy of doing some truly upsetting shit with one’s eyes.

Cons: Could be defeated by the all-knowing and all-seeing Muad’Dib with a well-placed “Who’s this clown?”

LaKeith Stanfield

Pros: Very few modern actors can radiate the sense of paranoid rage that is such a core aspect of Feyd-Rautha’s coiled-spring sadism as well as LaKeith Stanfield. Feyd does not actually appear all that much in the text, which makes it all the more important to cast an actor who can immediately communicate all of his negative energy.

Cons: It would unnecessarily complicate an already convoluted story to present a version of the character infinitely more cool and charismatic than Paul.

Iwan Rheon

Pros: The reigning bad vibes middleweight champion, Welsh actor Iwan Rheon could tell you everything about this character with a single thin-lipped smirk. Even people who have read the novel countless times might be fooled into thinking Feyd could emerge triumphant in the end watching Rheon interact with Chalamet’s Paul.

Cons: Rheon is a good five or six years too old to believably fit Feyd’s role as a dark twin for Paul; may prompt audience protests at being reminded of the existence of Game of Thrones.

Lucas Hedges

Pros: If Paul and Feyd are existentially bound to one another, who better to play opposite Chalamet than A24’s other on-call sweetheart? Pitting Chalamet and Hedges together in mortal combat would be like staging Ragnarok between two 19th-century poets who died of Victorian wasting disease.

Cons: Like matter and antimatter touching, physical contact between Chalamet and Hedges could trigger a particle annihilation that would claim both actors. But some things are worth the risk, and we must not be afraid of them, for fear is the mind-killer.

Jake Cole is a writer from Atlanta who has written for Slant Magazine, MTV, Hyperallergic and other publications.