Zendaya may have starred in two of the best movies of 2024, but it wasn’t all a cake walk. In a new interview, the actor revealed that she suffered “terrible heatstroke” while filming Dune: Part Two.
Speaking with W Magazine, she explained that it was “very hot” on the set of the sci-fi epic, and the nearest bathrooms were a “hike” away from the remote location in Jordan where they were filming. On top of that, her costume — the stillsuit worn by the desert inhabitants of Arrakis — was very heavy, and took around 10 minutes to get on and off.
All that combined, Zendaya explained she had “such a fear of peeing myself, or shitting myself honestly, because you don’t have enough time to get back to the bathroom, and then when you get back to the bathroom, you have to then get your costume off.”
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In light of that fear, she wasn’t too concerned with filling her body with liquids, including, unfortunately, water. “One day, I didn’t drink enough and it was super hot,” she said. “I had terrible heatstroke and went home.”
Feeling “so barfy” on her bathroom floor, she called her mother. “She was like, ‘Did you drink water today?’” Zendaya recounted. “I said ‘no.’ I thought I was being smart, but you can’t do that. So, lesson learned. Just take bathroom breaks!”
Elsewhere in the interview, she spoke about how getting in shape for Challengers helped her prepare for Dune: Part Two. “I was in the best shape that I had been in a really long time,” she said. “For Dune, the costumes were very heavy and restrictive. The first few weeks, your body’s quite sore. When I was walking through the sand every day, my butt looked great. So that worked out! I was prepared.” Watch a video of the interview below.
For more, revisit Consequence’s guide to what might happen in Dune: Part Three and beyond.
