Taylor-Joy recalled getting in contact with Villeneuve and actually begging for a role in “Dune”:
“Before I even sat down, he was like, ‘I want you to be in ‘Dune,’ but you can’t do it!’ […] I was like, ‘Please?’ I skipped all the stages of grief and went straight to begging. I was like, ‘I can do this. I can be in Australia and Abu Dhabi at the same time.’ He wanted me to be part of the universe. We kept in touch. I just had this feeling that it wasn’t over.”
And indeed it wasn’t. Taylor-Joy saw to that. While on the set of “Furiosa,” out in the deserts of Australia, she persistently called her agents asking for production updates on “Dune.” She was hoping something might be delayed or come out ahead of schedule in such a way that she could sneak away from “Furiosa,” film something for “Dune,” and then return. Sadly, nothing manifested, and Taylor-Joy returned to Los Angeles at the end of “Furiosa.”
But then, by some miracle, Villeneuve revealed that he had made a deal with Warner Bros. that if he finished “Dune” on time, he would be given a few extra days to arrange a scene with Taylor-Joy. The actor was already prepared. As Villeneuve wrote in an e-mail to Variety:
“Anya was Alia as soon as I met with her. […] In fact, I realized after the fact, she has always been Alia. Anya feels out of this world, as though she belongs to some other dimension, one step into the dream.”
Fitting, as Alia appears in a dream sequence.