Tim Blake Nelson Is Heartbroken After His Dune: Part Two Character Was Cut
When adapting a novel as dense and convoluted as Frank Herbert's "Dune," you will unfortunately have to cut major elements from it, even if you're splitting the book in two. The first "Dune" movie cut out a significant amount of the book's mystery storyline, where nearly everyone in House Atreides suspected someone else of being a Harkonnen spy. This cut made a lot of sense: in order to do it justice, director Denis Villeneuve probably would've had to add an extra hour to the runtime. Still, that doesn't lessen the blow for fans who loved the book's early paranoid atmosphere.
Although "Dune: Part Two" covers a slightly smaller page count than the first movie, it too needed to make some major omissions to keep the pacing sharp. This meant cutting the novel's two-year time jump, and unfortunately it also meant cutting out poor Tim Blake Nelson. A well-known actor from works like "The Ballad of Buster Cruggs," "O Brother, Where Are Thou?" and the 2019 "Watchmen" mini-series, Nelson indicated in an interview with MovieWeb that he only shot one scene for the movie:
"I don't think I'm at liberty to say what the scene was ... [Villeneuve] had to cut it because he thought the movie was too long. And I am heartbroken over that, but there's no hard feelings. I loved it, and I can't wait to do something else with him and we certainly plan to do that."
Sadly, there's not much chance of the scene being restored in a director's cut, either, since Villeneuve doesn't to director's cuts. As he explained to: "I'm a strong believer that when it's not in the movie, it's dead. I kill darlings, and it's painful for me."
As for who Nelson would've played in the film? He hasn't said, but fans have a good guess...
Meet Count Fenring
Count Fenring was a childhood friend of the Emperor Shaddam IV, and served as an Imperial Agent on Arrakis throughout the Harkonnen's rule of the planet. Fenring's main claim to fame is that he's able to make himself invisible to prescient vision, to the point where not even Paul (even after he drinks the Water of Life) can see him in his visions of the future. In the scheming political landscape of "Dune," this is a deeply disconcerting skill. When characters like Paul and Jessica are making decisions (and counter-decisions) based on all of this, the existence of a guy who can't be predicted tends to complicate everything far beyond anyone's comfort zone.
Fenring is also a eunuch, which is the result of him being an unwilling part of the Bene Gesserit breeding program. He was a potential candidate for the Kwisatz Haderach, the long-prophesized figure whom the Bene Gesserit planned to make Emperor, but he was born a generation too early. His wife Margot Fenring, a Bene Gesserit witch, does appear in "Dune: Part Two," played by Léa Seydoux — but there's no mention of her husband.
In the book, Count Fenring serves as the interim governor on Arrakis who helps officially transition the Atreides into power. It's not clear exactly how much he did with this role to sabotage the Atreides' brief reign, but given his allegiance to the Emperor it's certain that he was complicit (to at least some extent) in Leto's assassination and the massacre of House Atreides. Physically, Fenring is described as a small weasel-like man, another duplicitous schemer in a series filled with them. The character was portrayed by Miroslav Taborsky in the 2000 "Dune" miniseries; Tim Blake Nelson doesn't look exactly like Taborsky, but he's a good fit for the novel's description.
What about Thufir?
Despite how intriguing Fenring is, the source material doesn't actually do much with him. At the end of the first book, he leaves the planet to peacefully go into retirement/exile with the Emperor. He gets a few shout-outs in subsequent novels, but he never makes a real impact on the plot again. It's a realistic yet anti-climactic conclusion to the character, one that doesn't feel all that cinematic. When it comes to properly establishing the Harkonnens and the Emperor as a threat in "Dune: Part 2," it makes sense to keep Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) as the big new focus.
What helps ease the sting around Fenring's omission is that he was also cut from the first film, so it's not like movie-only viewers had any expectations for him going into "Dune: Part Two." The character cut that stings the most is that of Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who was established in the first film only to be forgotten entirely in the second. Although Villeneuve "adored" the character, he explained in an interview with Screen Crush that he cut Thufir from "Part: Two" to make room for a bigger focus on the Bene Gesserit.
As sad as this is for Thufir fans, it's also a pretty reasonable decision. After all, much of book-Thufir's character arc is wrapped up in his suspicions that Jessica was the Harkonnen spy, a subplot that was removed entirely from the first movie. Thufir's main arc in the second half of the book is realizing he was wrong about Jessica and apologizing for it, but in the movies he's got nothing to apologize for. If Villeneuve had to cut characters for the run time's sake, it admittedly checks out that these two would be at the top of the list.
"Dune: Part Two" is in theaters now.