Patrick Stewart had no idea who Sting was on the set of Dune: 'You play in a police band?'
'I had never heard of Sting. That's how isolated I was from the music world'
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir Patrick Stewart is an impeccable storyteller – even when he’s recounting an embarrassing moment in his life, he still comes across like the most charming man in the world.
A video captured from Emerald City Comic Con in 2013 has recently surfaced online, in which Stewart revealed to the crowd that while working on David Lynch’s Dune, he had no idea who his co-star Sting was.
Sting played Feyd-Rautha opposite Stewart’s Gurney Halleck in the 1984 sci-fi epic, adapted from Frank Hebert’s 1965 novel of the same name.
“Music, at least popular music, has never played a big part in my life,” he told the audience. “I had never heard of Sting. That’s how isolated I was from the music world.”
He continued: “I heard he was a musician ... and so the second or third day we’re just hanging out on the set, just him and me, and I say, ‘So, you’re a musician?’ And he said, ‘Yup.’ And I said, ‘What do you play?’ And he said, ‘Bass.’ And God bless him, he said, ‘No, bass guitar.’”
“And I said, ‘You know, I’ve often wondered what is it like carrying that huge thing around everywhere you go.”
It gets more embarrassing from here, as Stewart then admitted: “And I said, ‘Are you a solo artist?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m in a band.’ And I said, Oh, what kind of band?’ And he said, ‘The Police,’” Stewart recalled. “Folks, I said, ‘You play in a police band?’”
It seems Stewart's story isn't the only hilarious piece of misfortune that befell him during filming, though he stressed that he took great pleasure in spending time with the rest of the cast, including personal hero Max von Sydow and now life-long friend Kyle MacLachlan.
However, it seems the actor wasn’t who Lynch actually intended to cast, with Stewart stressing the whole story is far too long to tell. ”Dune was an accident, it should not have happened to me,” he said. “I”m serious... David Lynch thought he had cast someone else.”
A new adaptation of Dune is set to be directed by Blade Runner 2049‘s Denis Villenueve, with Eric Roth, who penned Forrest Gump, hired to write the script.
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