'Dune' Director Reveals Visions Of Timothée Chalamet's Character Inspired By His Own Drug Experience

“Dune” director Denis Villeneuve has revealed that character Paul Atreides' visions in the movie were inspired by his own bad experience with drugs. The character was played by actor Timothée Chalamet.

During an interview with the Directors Guild of America on Wednesday, Villeneuve said that his son made a marijuana-infused cake that gave him "the worst bad trip of my life." But the director said that he turned that bad experience into a source of creative inspiration.

"The truth is that one thing that helped me tremendously to direct Timothée is, my son had cooked a banana cake a few months before we shot the movie, and the banana cake was very ‘spicy’ and I had the worst bad trip of my life," he said.

The 54-year-old director went on to explain how this incident helped him direct Chalamet's scene in the movie, where he sees faded visions.

"But it tremendously helped me, it sounds stupid, but it’s good to experience things yourself sometimes," he said, adding: "That bad trip, on marijuana, deeply helped me to direct Timothée in the visions, to explain to him the state I was looking for."

"And, strangely, when I mentioned the banana cake experience to Timothee, he got it! Here’s the truth," he concluded. "Don’t try this!"

"Dune" is an adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel of the same name. The flick dropped on Oct. 22, last year in theaters and on HBO Max. Besides Chalamet, the movie also stars Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Stellan, Javier Bardem, Skarsgård and Dave Bautista.

The second installment of the movie is slated to release on Oct. 20, next year and fans can expect more space traveling in the sequel as in the first installment the director kept less space-traveling.

During an interview with Empire last November, the director revealed that he "tried to keep all the space-traveling as mysterious as possible, like almost bringing some kind of mysticism or sacred relationship with that part of the movie."

Villeneuve admitted that he took a little bit of "liberty from the book, where it has a feeling that it could be something that is folding space in a way, that you can see it as almost as a stargate."

On the work front, Villeneuve will also direct projects like "The Son," "Rendezvous with Rama," "Dune: The Sisterhood" and "Cleopatra."