Jade Anouka on Dune: Prophecy, Women-led Stories, and the Future of the Creative Landscape.

Actress, poet, and creative, Jade Anouka has been a staple of the stage and screen since her debut in 2007. She now joins a new kind of sisterhood in the pivotal role of Theodosia in the currently airing Dune: Prophecy. Set 2000 years before Timothee Chalamet graces our screens, it refreshingly re-centres the women whose complex backstories are often overlooked in sci-fi. Exploring the birth of the Bene Gesserit, it tackles their origins, powers, motives, and often ambiguous moral mission in advancing ‘the sisterhood’. Theodosia, an almost omnipresent observer within the sisterhood, works alongside the audience to make sense of the unfolding events. New Wave Magazine was lucky enough to sit down with Jade to discuss her work, her thoughts on Dune: Prophecy and her character Theodosia, and what she sees for the future of sci-fi and her upcoming projects.

Jade Anouka Lanna Apisukh

I think a good starting point would be to ask, how are you at the minute, what have you been up to since the show started airing?

I’ve been busy dipping my toes into different things! I’m writing a lot at the moment, I’ve always written poetry anyway, but I’m working on a TV script. Acting-wise I had my one-woman play which I performed the year before last in New York and brought to London this year. Also, family stuff! My daughter’s just turned 3, so I’ve been busy in a different way too.

What was doing the show like, what were some of the main takeaways from your experience?

Doing the show has been so good and such fun. It was weird being in Budapest, but one of the brilliant things about filming there was that we were all away from home; we ended up becoming quite close and hanging out a lot. It felt like I did go to a summer camp!

For any of our readers who are yet to watch the show, how would you describe the key themes and plots of Dune: Prophecy?

I guess there are 2 ways of saying this. For those who know the Dune franchise, it’s set 2000 years before Timothee Chalamet’s character Paul Atreides is born. His mum Jessica in the films is part of a group called the Bene Gesserit and we go back to the birth of that group and those women, and what that means. It’s about empowering women to have complete control and understanding of themselves and their bodies at a molecular level. This is what allows them to be so powerful; to truth-say, to use ‘the voice’, to fight well, and to meditate. There’s so much in what they do and it’s really about making women have full autonomy over their bodies which I find a really lovely aspect of it. But, of course, with great power comes great responsibility.

This idea of full autonomy seems more prevalent than ever now, you were in America promoting the show and especially there, these ideas seem very current. What do you think are the implications of these women-led narratives?

Even being on the show; our lead director is a woman, our showrunner is a woman, the main characters are women, most of the cast are women, and the story is about ‘the sisterhood’. There’s a lot of female energy coming into the show which from my experience is different to a lot of sci-fi. It’s a very empowering space to be part of and to be on sets with so many groups of women getting to focus on powerful women is just so rare! I hope this will be part of a sea change!

Your character, Sister Theodosia, seems to have been tailor-made for you. Did you feel a sense of responsibility in taking a role that was created for you?

It's interesting because I initially read for a part that no longer exists. The show-runner and casting were very keen, however, in having me on the show which was amazing. They came up with this new character who represented something they wanted to have in the show that wasn’t being represented elsewhere. I don’t think we get the full extent of that which is why we need more series to find out her truth! The sisterhood for her is a sanctuary but also somewhere she can excel – there’s a real pressure to that but it’s brilliant for me to work with. Only the heads of the school know the extent of her capabilities but she also just wants to be one of the girls too.

As a queer person, I feel like we all wanted to be one of the girls!

I know we just didn’t fit in! 

Jade Anouka Lanna Apisukh

Were there any challenges in playing a character almost tailor-made in your image?

There are parallels with my life. It’s interesting because I don’t know how much Alison (the lead writer) and the other writers wrote for me. I feel like in playing this part, I put a bit of myself in there. Theo is someone who has walked in many rooms and felt othered and she is in a space where she is hiding a secret that she’s afraid might come out when she’s not ready for it too. These are all things I relate to and put into my performance. I don’t know how much there was in terms of it being tailored for me and how much I was able to do but these things are always a bit of both.

Do you think there are any other qualities which connect you and Theo?

I guess feeling the need and desire to excel, that if you’re going to do something do it properly. That’s very similar to me, if I get my heart set on something, there’s no stopping me.

Theo, uniquely, also spends a lot of time independent from the sisterhood. Did knowing you had this arc affect how you navigated your scenes with the other sisters?

It especially affected those early scenes which we shot first too. It was always in the back of my mind that those girls were going to become close and Theo was not going to get that opportunity. I think Theo shares this fear of leaving the sisters and her safety but also takes pride in being picked by Valya and getting a chance to prove her worth. As an actor too, I knew the other girls were going to get to work together for the rest of the months and I was going to go off.

Emily Watson is a pretty good trade though I must say!

I mean hey, I’m not complaining about getting to do one-on-one scenes with Emily Watson – Yes, please!

There are a lot of striking close-ups of you intercut between scenes. I found Theo replicates the audience’s eye, do you feel that she has an elevated gaze, more similar to the audience, that maybe makes her more relatable as a character?

That’s a really interesting observation. Once she’s left the sisterhood, she’s very much an observer. Theo is someone who is hyper-aware and studies everything: people, the room. This allows her to understand people and pay attention to who they are. Especially in the later episodes when the audience is playing catch-up, Theo is also trying to understand Valya’s motives, drive, and purpose. Like the audience, she’s in a unique position, as she’s in all these powerful rooms but is not completely in the know of what’s happening.

I found your first truth-saying quite a moving scene as it’s the first time we see Theo come into her powers. In connecting this with your other work, do you think poetry is your form of truth-saying?

That’s so interesting, I feel like ‘truth-saying’ could be my poet name. In the show, I feel truth-saying is me being able to understand someone else’s truth and tell it, whereas in poetry I’m telling my truth. Although now I’ve said that, I know that telling my truth will connect with other people’s truth. I think that’s why authenticity is so important as others will always connect with you as long as you’re honest, which poetry has always allowed me to be. That’s our dream as actors, right? – to do shows and portray characters that feel truthful either to ourselves or to someone else. When these roles feel truthful to us, there’s this added connection and depth that is wonderful to go to. If there are stories or themes that I don’t feel I’m touching on in my other work then I feel it’s my responsibility to tell the stories I wish I’d seen and others would benefit from seeing through my writing. If this happens to connect to other acting projects then amazing.

I found the poem you recited at the beginning of your TEDx Talk moving, the interspersal of non-fiction with fiction was so cool to hear.

Thank you – poetry is a great way of doing that! The reason I got into poetry was because I could break all the rules from English class. For me, poetry is about feeling and following your heart. This feeling could simply be because it rhythmically makes you feel something. I find it easier to be truthful and honest in a poetic form because of this.

Leading on from these ideas about portraying authenticity, your character is hiding quite an important secret. How was it striking a balance between what you could/wanted to reveal versus what you needed to conceal in playing this part?

It’s interesting I think, because for Theo, this need to conceal is the most important thing for her in terms of her safety at the sisterhood. This hidden secret however also doesn’t feel like a burden to her there. She’s allowed to reinvent herself if she needs to, and this is liberating for her in some ways. Later on, there’s potential that this secret gets revealed and this poses the question of who she feels safe revealing it to. She’s been pushing this secret down for so long that once it bubbles to the surface, it’s almost as if she’s forgotten she’s had this. She’s been pretending for so long and suddenly she has to face this again and make a decision.

Jade Anouka Lanna Apisukh

I want to touch more on how you feel about the broader themes in Dune: Prophecy, particularly, in this idea of chosen families and who we feel safe to reveal ourselves and our secrets to. I find this quite a ‘queer feeling’, do you think that Dune: Prophecy’s themes are particularly resonant with queer audiences?

I do think there’s a lot that will resonate with queer people in Dune: Prophecy, which I think is why people who aren’t into sci-fi or even the Dune films are connecting to this show. It is just a bit different and the balance of power is shifting slightly, and where power lies is not necessarily in the people you expect it to be with. The people who have been pushed into the shadows are the most powerful. Nothing is linear in its way of working, it just feels so different and I love that it’s going against the norm. Also, we’re at a whole school full of just women – there’s gayness there come on!

You centre the idea of othering in your TEDx Talk, what do you make of the ideas about uniformity and equality within the sisterhood, does othering still occur?

All the women have come from different walks of life and different planets, although their pasts are often hidden from them by their ‘mothers’. As we see early on in the show, however, the princess bypasses the training and becomes an acolyte. Even though there is this idea that we’re going to give everyone uniforms and everyone is going to be on the same level, I mean we see it in school, it doesn’t work. There’s an attempt to impose uniformity but there is a hierarchy – your capabilities, skills, and how quickly you can do the tasks elevate you. You’re elevated not because of your age necessarily but literally because of your capabilities which I guess is something good.

One of the themes I found powerful was motherhood. As both a mother and a daughter, what’s your take on the multiplicities of the female experience that we see on screen?

I think the ideas of mothering and daughtering will always come up when projects have more women, as a wider range of the female experience can be depicted. Things like being a mother, mothering, being a daughter, and the interrelationships between women, which we don’t see enough of, are suddenly at the forefront. I think for Theo, when she gets chosen by Valya – we talked earlier about her chosen family – it’s very emotional albeit scary. There is pride in being Valya’s favourite, maybe in the way in which a parent has seen her worth and feels proud of her. I relate to this. I don’t think, however, it’s as simple as Theo seeing Valya as a mother. The power dynamic is more wobbly in many ways, Theo has her wits about her with Valya in thinking about what Valya wants, and that the needs of the sisterhood come first. Theo and Valya have quite an unconventional mother-daughter relationship.

What do you see for the future of these narratives which recentre women, particularly around exploring the complexities of sisterhood? It seems very timely as Wicked is dominating the cultural landscape right now, are we going to see more women in genres like fantasy and sci-fi which are usually led by men?  

I hope so. It’s rare and special that the biggest film out at the moment and arguably one of the biggest TV shows that's just come out centres on two women. I liken it more, however, to the all-female Shakespeare trilogy that I performed in. When we first did the show, quite a few people were not sure if it would work with women doing men’s parts in Shakespeare. I love that the producers and director doubled down and did another one and another one. Cut to 6 years later, there’s a whole trilogy. And now, there’s a real sea-change in theatre in the UK with women doing non-conventional parts and seeing stories which look at women’s relationships in a different way. It was a hard start as not everyone’s going to be on board initially, but I’m fine with that. I think there will always be people who connect with the mission and those who are unsure about women-led projects will eventually get brought on board and realise how brilliant it is to see a much wider plethora of the human race. You get more women and suddenly you get more stories and relationships that you haven’t focused on before because the focus has consistently been on men.

Delving deeper into the themes and stories to which we connect, I have to ask a question about a favourite film we share: Doubt (2008). Throughout watching Dune: Prophecy, I noticed so many parallels with Doubt. Both projects explore sisterhood, morally ambiguous mother superiors, the fallibility of truth, and the destruction of ourselves and the networks we’ve created. Do you find yourself naturally drawn to these themes and did you pick up on these similarities at all?

Honestly, I don’t think I was aware of the parallels initially. However, there is something in that struggle over our moral compasses that interests me. I do get drawn to this tension of who gets to decide what’s good and what’s right, it feels very live and relatable. Also, being part of a big organisation that has a really strong goal and asking do I believe in that goal or do I believe in that person? Or, do I believe in that big greater thing, or does this just work for me right now? I grew up in a household where I went to Catholic school and Church, and had to work out whether I wanted to be part of that. I also had this conversation with myself where I took the good elements from this experience and left those which did not serve me. 

Do you think we could see you playing Sister Aloysius (the mother superior in Doubt) in a West End revival?

Yes – can somebody call me about that, please? I would love to!

You and your wife are both free-lance creatives, to finish up, do you have any parting words of wisdom?

Just remember that when you are doing a project, it’s ok that you don’t necessarily do something that you believe in 100%. When you’re starting, you need to think about three things: is it financially viable, is it creatively interesting, and will it help you develop your career? If you can get one of those great, if you can get two brilliant, and it’s an absolute joy and luxury when you get three! Do theatre as well, that’s my other trick!

Finally, are there any upcoming projects you’re working on that you’re particularly excited about?

I’m doing a play! It’s just been announced, it’s by Chris Bush, it’s called Otherland and it’s at the Almeida and it’s brilliant!

Vuk Winrow