The cast members of Dune: Part Two do not like each other, according to people online.
This claim, perhaps unsurprisingly, has not been prompted by anything any actor has said or done. But Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh, and Austin Butler have had a… slightly awkward press tour. And their amateur internet biographers have been dissecting interviews to death in a way that has become more and more the normal mode for fans online.
Fanatical obsessions with celebrities date as far back as the concept of celebrity itself. But what sticks out about this reaction is how seemingly small a moment can be, and how much speculation it can inspire online. The four appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and at one point, Kimmel asked if the cast socialized outside the movie. In response, Chalamet said, “Yeah, I mean we, um—” and before he could finish, Zendaya simply laughed at his response and sort of looked around with her arms crossed. Chalamet later finished, “We interact on talk shows like these… in the most natural way. We’re almost comfortable.”
This interview alone has been enough to fuel viral videos and posts that comment on the overall awkwardness of the cast. The fact that there are four of them doesn’t help, because it’s led people to speculate on the various interpersonal dynamics that could be at play within the group. I’ve seen videos where people claim that the rest of the cast is just “tolerating” Butler, while Zendaya is legitimately friends with Chalamet.
The entire response to the Dune: Part Two cast plays into the general tendency of users of TikTok and other video-friendly platforms to hyper-focus on the play-by-play of casual moments. On TikTok, there are entire accounts dedicated to lip-reading and people who claim to be experts in decoding body language dissecting videos of Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez chatting during the 2024 Golden Globes. And while these videos can be harmless speculation, and might even be framed as so, the trend leads to a dynamic where fans continue to buy into uncomfortable or even false narratives that those involved directly refute. It seems like no matter what is said, there will be a faction of fans who believe Taylor Swift is gay.
Lately there’s been an extra emphasis on how celebs conduct themselves in press appearances. On platforms like TikTok, one PR agent has been able to grow audiences of more than 470,000 followers just by dissecting press strategies and suggesting different ways for celebrities to handle crises. In particular, apology videos have become a flashpoint for people looking to gain more of a critical eye to the way celebrities are presented, but there are other examples of this interest as well. During the Mean Girls press tour, several viral videos online expressed the idea that Reneé Rapp was not media-trained just because she was relatable and seemingly open with her answers.
Despite all the internet chatter, all these actors are still people, and professionals who don’t need to be best friends to make a movie work. It makes sense this particular group wouldn’t have the most chemistry given the story of Dune: Part Two — two of the group’s characters spend next to no time with any of the others. While Chalamet’s Paul and Zendaya’s Chani spend much of the book kindling their relationship, the only time they wind up in a room with Pugh’s Princess Irulan and Butler’s Feyd-Rautha is at the story’s climax. (The movie, by all accounts, is expected to be a faithful adaptation.)
Sure, having some cute moments on the press tour would only endear audiences, but it’s not the end-all-be-all. So as long as no one spits on someone else during the tour, I think we can call it good.
