Dune: Part Two star Josh Brolin’s resume is peppered with mega-blockbusters (see: his run as Thanos in the Avengers movies), but he hasn’t lost his quirkiness. Things like his Dune poetry and his mastery of the Dune “space guitar” have roots in his love of sci-fi, which he’s carried since childhood.
In a new interview with GQ, Brolin points to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and other genre works as helping him cope with his home life as a kid. “I was like, So I don’t have to be here all the time—I don’t have to be around these fucking crazy parents, and I can actually live out this story? That was a great revelation for me,” he said. Later in the piece, after praising Dune: Part Two director Denis Villeneuve—with whom Brolin has worked three times so far; he alludes to a possible fourth team-up, if Dune Messiah happens—the actor chuckles about being a veteran actor among cast powered by emerging superstars, including Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. He doesn’t care about being the old guy; he just loves being a part of Dune because, well… he’s a raging nerd, just like us.
“I have this face that looks like it was run over by a truck, or that I fought a mastodon or whatever,” he says. “And the truth of the matter is, I just want to geek out with other geeks. I didn’t even know that for a long time, but I know that now, as a 55-year-old guy, nothing makes me happier than just being in the sandbox with these socially inept geniuses.”
The whole interview, which digs more into Brolin’s career and his upcoming memoir, among other topics, is well worth reading at GQ. For Outer Range fans, he notes that he’s directing an episode of the Prime Video show’s second season—though beyond that, all he says about it is “I think we spent [the first] season navigating through, trying to figure out what it was” and, in regards to upcoming projects, “I’m going to go jump in a hole on a TV show.”
Dune: Part Two is in theaters Friday, March 1.
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