““It’s so nice to talk to The Hollywood Reporter,” Olivia Williams says, as we start our interview, “because I really had that Hollywood experience. I went from living in a damp basement flat in Camden Town to, in a matter of days, flying in a private jet to go on set of a huge Hollywood”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Over the course of a single year, from 1997 to 1998, Williams, before then a jobbing British theater actress, doing commercials for Dove shower cream — “they asked me to audition in a bikini… I felt like giving up” — starred in three studio films: Kevin Costner’s The Postman, Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. The Postman was a legendary flop. Rushmore an indie breakout. The Sixth Sense a gargantuan, global hit. Williams, it appeared, had arrived.
“I went from galloping horses with Kevin Costner — doing my own stunts, thank you very much — to hanging out eating carrots with Bill Murray,” Williams recalls. “The film that Sofia Coppola made, Lost in Translation, that was literally my experience with Bill Murray.”
But overnight success stories don’t always play to script. Williams spent the 2000s doing a “string of movies that I thought were great,” starring alongside Balthazar Getty in Four Dogs Playing Poker (2000), appearing opposite Antonio Banderas in Jonas McCord’s The Body (2001), and above the title on The Man from Elysian Fields (2001) from director George Hickenlooper. “I was married to James Coburn and shagging Andy Garcia,” Williams says of the Elysian Fields role, “life doesn’t get better than that, really.” But while she “loved every single one of those films, they all disappeared without a trace,” she says, chuckling, ” that’s sort of my modus operandi. Peter Cattaneo did the wonderful The Full Monty. I was in his second film, Lucky Break (2001). I did a Martin Amis adaptation called Dead Babies (2000). Can’t think why that didn’t go far, not one for the American market, obviously…”
Olivia Williams on the set of Dune: Prophecy Attila Szvacsek/HBO
In person, Williams is sharp and sardonic, gossipy and blunt, but there’s not a hint of cynicism, not a smidgen of regret, as she recounts her Hollywood adventures. While she hasn’t headlined a studio blockbuster since her “lucky, surreal year” of 1997-1998, Williams has rarely lacked work. From channelling Cherie Blair in The Ghost Writer (2010) to playing Camilla Parker Bowles in the final season of The Crown, to her show-stopping cameo in Florian Zeller’s The Father.
Much of that work has been back home in the U.K., but over the last decade, Williams has returned to U.S. screens in TV series, such as Manhattan (2014-2015) on WGN America and Counterpart (2017-2019) on Starz.
“All the really interesting [American] work I’ve had offered to me was because of Rushmore,” says Williams, “Manhattan [creator] Sam Shaw is a massive Rushmore fan. And Justin Marks, before his incredible success that is Shogun, did Counterpart and cast me because he loved Rushmore. All I needed was for the Rushmore fans to grow up and write movies and TV shows.”
Through it all, Williams has managed to avoid being typecast while proving remarkably adept at picking quality projects, slotting in wherever she’s needed on the call sheet. “I don’t count lines, I don’t care,” she says. “If there’s a project I want to be in, like The Father, I’ll sweep the stage to be in it.”
Williams says she didn’t count her lines in Dune: Prophecy, either, but there sure are a lot of them. In the new prequel series, set 10,000 years before the events of the Denis Villeneuve movies, Williams stars alongside Emily Watson, playing the sisters Tula and Valya Harkonnen, founders of the fabled, female-only sect, the Bene Gesserit, which rules the Dune universe from the shadows.
Dune: Prophecy is a rare sci-fi series featuring a mostly female cast. Alongside stars Watson and Williams there are Jodhi May as the powerful Empress Natalya, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina as royal heir Princess Ynez, Shalom Brune-Franklin as the rebel Freman Mikaela, there are the “phenomenal young actresses” Chloe Lea, Aoife Hinds and Faoileann Cunningham playing Bene Gesserit acolytes in training. The men — including Mark Strong, Travis Fimmel, Chris Mason and Josh Heuston — are consigned to supporting roles.
“It’s all about women, it’s all about power. We’re sisters, and we, you know, rule the universe,” explains Williams. “It’s set thousands of years in the future but the parallels with convents and Catholicism are very interesting. Ultimately, it’s about how fucking terrified men are of women who get in an enclosed order and don’t seem to need men or sex.”
As a “lapsed Catholic” who “loves a wimple, loves a nun’s outfit” Williams says she jumped at the role and the opportunity to work with Watson, whom she first met at the Royal Shakespeare Company more than 30 years ago. “I’ve known her since we were in our late 20s [but] I’ve never even acted a scene with her.”
Olivia Williams plays reverend mother Tula Harkonnen in Dune: Prophecy Attila-Szvacsek/HBO
To capture the mindset of loving sisters who are also bitter political rivals, Williams and Watson took a research trip to the National Portrait Gallery in London and studied the Tudor paintings of English Queen Elizabeth the First and her sister, and rival, Mary Queen of Scots.
“Sisters can be all sorts of things,” says Williams, “there’s that survival at the fittest thing, that Darwinian sense to sisters, but there’s also dear, dear love towards your sibling, the person who’s known you all your life.”
Dune: Prophecy reframes the Dune canon as explored in the films. House Harkonnen, the villains of the movies, are shown to have been defamed based on a lie told by the films’ supposed heroes of House Atreides. Williams is careful to avoid spoilers for the twisty, plot-heavy series, except to note that the Harkonnen sisters go to “obscene” lengths to pursue their goals of avenging the family and that her character’s “biggest secret” is not revealed until the final episode of season 1.
The fate of Dune: Prophecy will play out after its premiere on Monday, Nov. 17 on HBO and Max. Williams, for one, says she is fully committed “both emotionally and contractually” to continue playing Tula Harkonnen in future seasons.