That’s what strikes me about Tula at this point in the show, because she seems to be the real woman of action. You have Valya pulling the strings, but Tula comes through and gets it done. But to your point, she’s also easily influenced. To what extent do you think she’s driving the bus, and to what extent do you think she’s being manipulated by those around her?
I think she begins her journey to avenge her brother’s death very influenced by Valya. We’ve seen her say “An eye for an eye will never be enough,” and yet off she goes. I think Orry is a good mirror for Griffin. He’s going to be the next head patriarch of the Atreides, and in that way, I think she is being swayed, pushed by Valya.
She’s never been independent before. And she’s the youngest, so she’s always been Valya’s sister. This is the first time she’s been independent, and I think that does embolden her, and I think she sees this as both an opportunity to break away and surprise Valya in a way that she knows she will value. That’s how I think about this massacre and how it forms in Tula’s mind, how she cooks it up. This is her masterpiece, so to speak, that she’s going to present to value and get this approval that she’s always sought.
How did Olivia Williams’s portrayal of Tula impact your performance? Were you talking during production or did you build the character separately?
She had begun work before I got to Budapest. We hadn’t spoken, actually, before I arrived, so I had just been listening to old podcasts that she’d done. I’m obviously Irish, and she’s working in her own accent and I wanted to be more specific. I always, no matter what I’m working on, pick a person, famous or not famous, who I listen to. And she was right there.
But we didn’t meet until I got to Budapest. She was so generous in her time and how she talked about Tula. We talked about the family dynamic, what it means to be the youngest sibling. Then I got a screen pack from production of some of the work she’d been doing, and I watched those in my own time.
I kind of used it as an anchor. In certain takes if I started to feel a little lost, I’d think back to a scene and something I’d noticed and let myself think about that for that take to ground me.
Anything people should be getting excited about for the back half of the season?
Obviously I can’t say anything, but there’s a lot of things that people haven’t guessed. They’re not sniffing it out.
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