Rebecca Ferguson Confirms Lady Jessica Will Return for DUNE: PART THREE – “I Wasn’t Reckoning on It”

Fans of Dune will be happy to hear that Rebecca Ferguson’s Bene Gesserit matriarch, Lady Jessica, will return for Dune: Part Three, even though her character doesn’t appear in Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, the novel the next film will adapt.

Speaking with GamesRadar+ during press for her new Netflix thriller A House of Dynamite, Ferguson revealed she’ll make a brief appearance in director Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming sci-fi epic, which is now in production.

“Yeah! I am in it. Small. Dip in and out, because I'm not in the books. So I wasn't reckoning on it. Denis [Villeneuve] called me and was like, 'Why do I have a feeling you think you're not in the film?' And I was like, 'Because I'm not in the books?' And he was like, 'No, mate, I have a couple of scenes…'”

It’s a welcome surprise for fans who watched Jessica’s powerful transformation through Dune and Dune: Part Two. The mother of Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides, her defiance of the Bene Gesserit order set the entire saga in motion.

In Part Two, she ascended to Reverend Mother and carried Paul’s sister, Alia, who will take center stage in Part Three, portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy.

Although Ferguson’s role will be small, she made it clear the experience was special.

“Very rarely do I get any more FOMO. I quite often am relieved to not be involved in things. I'm the one who comes in and leaves fast. But I think [Dune] is the one… I walked onto set, and I saw [cinematographer] Linus Sandgren and Denis, and Timothée was there.

“And it just rings close. I knew I was going to leave the next day, so there was a sadness to it. But I also know that the film is epic.”

There’s still a lot not known about Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three, but rumors have circulated that Robert Pattinson will play the mysterious shapeshifting villain Scytale, though no casting has been confirmed by Warner Bros. Ferguson’s return wasn’t publicly acknowledged either, until now.

If the film follows Dune Messiah closely, it will be set roughly 12 years after the events of Part Two, bringing back Zendaya’s Chani, Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan, and Jason Momoa’s Duncan Idaho, though the details around his return remain one of the story’s wildest twists.

Dune: Part Three is slated to hit theaters on December 18, 2026.