Robert Russell is true to form as a traitor par excellence

Dr. Yueh is, in a word, a traitor, the man who betrays the family of Duke Leto Atreides (William Hurt) in Frank Herbert's Dune, the SCI FI Channel's epic miniseries based on the legendary sci-fi novel. Traitor though he may be, however, Dr. Yueh is not exactly a villain. Breathing life into this enigmatic character is veteran British actor Robert Russell.

SCIFI.COM caught up with the actor on the set of Frank Herbert's Dune in Prague, where he spoke in detail about his character, the experience of bringing Dune to the screen and his thoughts on the novel itself.

Let's talk about Dr. Yueh. Do you see him as the villain of the piece?
He's actually a good guy who tries to do his duty. He's very loyal, or would like to be loyal to the Atreides family. But the villains, the Harkonnens, have got his wife and they're using her as a tool to force him to do their dirty business. And their dirty business is to go into the Palace and basically murder or kidnap the Duke (William Hurt). So it's an interesting, slightly subtle character. He's done a terrible thing, but he's not really a bad guy. He's forced to be a traitor against his better judgment.

And just how difficult is it to play that kind of character, a decent man forced to become a traitor?
I do it every day of my life (laughs). No. It's interesting. There are certain contradictions, I suppose, which one has to work out for one's self. In order to go against and betray your boss, you have to have a really, really powerful motivation. And this guy, Dr. Yueh, has a special training. ... It's some sort of super-training. Imagine the sort of thing that astronauts might have to do, plus a bit more probably, to make them really, really reliable under all circumstances. That makes it doubly important that this guy, in spite of all his training, would turn against his masters. So the main difficulty, I think, is to come across as a straight guy, a reliable guy, and yet somehow make the treachery credible when it happens. I don't know whether it will work, from the viewer's point of view, but we'll see.

What's been your favorite part of shooting the role so far?
I haven't done too much of the part yet. We're into the last few weeks of shooting, but most of my part is actually still to be shot. I have already played my first very small bit and my last very small bit, so it's just the filling in of details that have to be done. I've already died, as it were, so I've got that out of the way. As far as my favorite thing, it's this ambiguity, this ambivalence. It's a challenge to not give away to the audience that this guy is going to be the villain. There are one or two other candidates who are suspects, let's say, who are mentioned. There's a scene where the Duke is looking around at various people at a reception because he suspects that there's a traitor in his midst. They say, "Could it be him? I'm sure it's not him. Could it be him? Nah, no way. What about him? No, absolutely, out of the question." So these people are kind of mentioned by name and each one of them is discounted. "They couldn't possibly be that."

The interesting thing, too, is to show that the character is somehow a little under stress or under pressure and not quite feeling very comfortable about things. At the same time the character has got to be a good enough actor, if you will, not to let that show. There's that extra layer of the actor, me, playing a man who is being an actor, in a way. That makes it interesting.

Based on what you've done so far on set, what are you making of the whole production?
Well, I can judge only from the limited amount I've seen, which is mostly to do with the look of it, the sets, which are fabulous, extremely impressive. There is something really... created... out of another world here.

I am hesitating as I say this because I'm actually looking around. We are sitting on the set right now and I'm looking at this amazing world. What impresses me, and it's in the book, is that they've got this wonderful combination of the ancient past and some sort of future. I think they've got that (rendered) beautifully. They have got bits of it which seem to be, I don't know, Babylonian. They are these massive, monumental bits. You see a statue's foot and it's about 10 feet long, and it's great. When you look around, they've got these big pillars — these great, massive, solid pillars, yet they have lights in them. That's kind of a high-tech element in an ancient setting. That's the whole film.

We've also got these fantastic weapons and costumes and these protective shields which the guys use when they're fighting, and also different kinds of spacecraft. But it is all in the context of a kind of society that has turned its back on computers and things high-tech. For me, whether it's the book or the film, the most fascinating thing is that Frank Herbert had the prescience to see that this is where we must end up sooner or later, in a place beyond high-tech and computers. We can't sustain it indefinitely.

How familiar were you with Frank Herbert's novel before becoming involved in the miniseries?
I hadn't read it before I got this. The title rang a vague bell. People must have been talking about it when I was a teenager or whatever, but I had never read it. And when I came upon it I said, "Well, here we go, a big fat book. It's science fiction." I am usually not a great friend of science fiction, but I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed it perhaps because it's not pure science fiction, perhaps because it's got lots of other things in it. As I said, I liked the fact that it looks forward to this post-technological age which seems to be what will happen sooner or later, if humanity survives at all, that is. So that's attractive, and also Herbert has worked out the Atreides' whole world, an ecosystem, a language, a culture, a business and a whole biblical aspect with Paul (Alec Newman) as the messiah. So much thought went into the whole world that he created for Dune. It's very impressive.

How would you say the miniseries compares to the novel?
Starting with the script, I think it's excellent. A lot of the slower, heavier, perhaps even — dare I say it? — more unnecessary parts of the novel have been chopped out. So the script obviously has a much faster pace. I think (writer-director) John Harrison has done a great job of telling the story in the screenplay.

What do you think non-genre fans will think of Frank Herbert's Dune? Will they be able to appreciate it?
I would say it might be a mistake — though it's not my job, of course — to market the film as a sci-fi movie. It has those elements in it, of course, but for me it's got much more. It's got this whole universe it creates, which is fascinating. If people are not sci-fi buffs, my feeling is that it's still going to be a very compelling thing to watch. Quite apart from the actual story and the drama, the look of it is great and that will be very interesting. And it has that strange, familiar-unfamiliar thing about it. It is a new world, but it's familiar. That should make it interesting to anybody. And then the story, it's pretty dramatic stuff. It's got a classic good guys/bad guys scenario, but that's just on one level. Below that you've got a lot of other stuff.