Life as a Harkonnen 10,000 years before their rise to monstrous power isn’t for the faint of heart – just ask Mark Addy and Edward Davis.
Episode 4 of “Dune: Prophecy” spends much of its time in the Harkonnen family apartment on Salusa Secundus, and it’s a bitter place. Addy plays family patriarch – and Valya’s (Emily Watson) uncle – Evgeny, and Davis is the younger Harkonnen Harrow, who has higher aspirations for himself and his family. The pair told TheWrap a lot of focus went into creating a penetratingly cold environment to the episode to underline the animosity between Evgeny and Valya.
“It’s a very bleak feel,” Addy said. “They wanted it to feel like a cold place you’ve got to stick by the fire if you want any semblance of warmth. A place that the cold would would get right through to your bones. That kind of manifests itself also in the characters. The way they treat each other and everyone else – it’s not a hospitable place at all.”
Davis added that the coldness and distrust bubbles to the forefront with Valya’s return to their life. He claimed there wasn’t a lot of hope for Harrow to trust Valya after years spent living with Evgeny, who fostered a lot of animosity.
“She’s abandoned these two men for so long that I don’t imagine Harrow’s ever really got to know her at all,” Davis said. “All he’s had is Evgeny whispering in his ear that she’s the devil. So, yeah, there’s a great coldness in all senses to the apartment. Also, the food we had to eat didn’t help. Smorgasbord of smoked fish and stuff – first mouthful delicious, 20 mouthfuls later, not so much.”
Valya’s abrupt reappearance in the pair’s lives is a moment of opportunity for Harrow. As Davis puts it, Harrow has a personal drive to not only bring House Harkonnen out of the shameful hole it’s been in for the last few decades, but to be the one to do it. He sees that opportunity through Valya – unfortunately, Valya also plays Harrow for her own games.
“It’s only when Valya comes along and manipulates him into this high-powered position and the high council that he gets a glimpse of real power,” Davis said. When that’s taken away because of what happens at the Landsraad, there’s only one way he can go – which is up, and maybe sideways.”
For Evgeny, Valya’s reappearance only strengthens the ghosts the man has been living with for decades. Neither he nor Valya ever properly (or healthily) mourned Griffin’s death, and all that vitriol comes to a head as the episode concludes. The two have a shouting match for the ages that has Evgeny on the floor gasping for his oxygen tank – which Valya refuses him as she watches her uncle die.
“He places the blame squarely on her shoulders for Griffin’s death,” Addy said. “Griffin, the golden boy, the hope, the future of House Harkonnen, and killed because of her. That festered away over 30 years, and that bitterness resurfaces, of course, as fresh as ever when she arrives back.”
Addy continued, “30 years of of simmering resentment from Evgeny spills out as soon as she arrives, really. She takes the opportunity to not allow him to breathe any longer. You’re doing that to a member of your own family – not a very nice member of your own family – but it shows the length that Valya is willing to go to to achieve her aims.”
Finally, Addy looked back on a head of house he played on a previous high-profile fantasy series – “Game of Thrones.” Addy played King Robert Baratheon in Season 1 of the HBO series – a character who found himself on a throne and with a level of power he never wanted, which is a far cry from Evgeny, who yearns for the power and respect he and his family lost. When asked who he’d rather see seated on a throne, Addy hemmed and hawed before making a choice.
“I mean, they’re both horribly flawed characters, and to choose one or the other. I think Robert had a lot more fun in his life,” Addy said. “Just the idea of 30 years of seething in a bitterly cold hellhole. I’d have to go for Robert over Evgeny.”
