“I made them for them and charged for both.” Javier Bardem confesses why he is in ‘Dune’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’, and explains how he met Denis Villeneuve

The dependent market seems to have become more specialized as the roles of agents and managers and their relevance have evolved. Well who needs an agent to argue his selections for the upcoming projects especially when there are children. It’s definitely true in case of Javier Bardem who has recently mesmerized the global viewers as Stilgar in Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune: Part Two’. Even his portrayal of Stilgar made headlines in the press and sparked viral memes, along with the cries of his “Lisan al Gaib!” which later went on to became a Tik Tok trend.

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During an interview with Conan O’Brien, Bardem said that the roles in the baroque adaptation of Frank Herbert’s work and in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid where he plays Poseidon, he made the decision taking into consideration the preferences of his children. Apparently, his children have very good taste indeed!

He recalled a touching episode: “I told my daughter, ‘I’m going to be in The Little Mermaid’ and she’s like, ‘Am I going to be Ariel?’ (laughs) I said, ‘No, but I’m going to be the father,’ and she was so emotional and started crying ‘Oh, so happy.’ I did Dune for the same purpose as well, for my son. I made Dune for him, I did The Little Mermaid for her….And fortunately, I worked on both!”

While talking to Frames, Bardem discussed his first meeting with Denis Villeneuve, whom he affectionately called “a very nice person,” and how he got to play Stilgar in Dune. He remembers first encountering the character in the book in his mid-twenties.

“Denis Villeneuve is someone I met at the Cannes Festival. (…) He also said that he wants to cast me in a movie in which he plays almost no role, but only if there is part two. I was in a hurry because I remember I was twelve when I first saw mister Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings and then I was about twenty-five or six when I came across mister Stilgar from Dune and the same feeling came. So when he told me he had a character for me, I asked, ‘It won’t be Stilgar, right?’ When he said yes, I’ve gone crazy: ‘Tell me when and where! Count me in!’”

No one is expecting this: “Lisan al Gaib” from the film The Messiah of Dune, where we will have to wait some time again to hear it, even though we beg him to do so again.

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