Zendaya was afraid of peeing or shitting herself while filming Dune: Part Two

The Fremen of Dune are intimately familiar with the importance of water. It’s hard to come by on their planet, so they worship the substance and reuse every little drop—even designing stillsuits that recycle sweat and urine into potable liquid. Luckily for Zendaya, she’s a big Hollywood star on planet Earth and has access to bottles of Poland Spring. Unfortunately, the suit she was given to play a Fremen wasn’t actually designed to Arrakis standards, and it would have been super embarrassing for her to pee in it. 

Still, she had to learn the hard way what the character she played in Dune: Part Two has known her whole life: in the desert, water is everything. “We were in Jordan. It was very hot, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, man, the bathrooms are so far away,’ because we had to hike to the locations. If you have to pee, you need at least 10 minutes to get out of the costumes. I was like, Damn, I don’t want to drink too much water,” the actor recalled during an interview with W Magazine. “I had such a fear of peeing myself or shitting myself, honestly, in the suit on set.”

While it’s a pretty funny prospect, the actor soon found herself in a far more serious situation. “One day, I didn’t drink enough and I had a heatstroke. I felt so barfy,” she continued. “I remember calling my mom on the bathroom floor, saying, ‘I feel terrible.’ She was like, ‘Did you drink water today?’ I said no. I thought I was being smart, but you can’t do that. So, lesson learned.”

In addition to posing some potential bathroom challenges, the suits were also “very heavy and restrictive,” Zendaya explained. Luckily, she had just come from weeks of training for Challengers, so “when I was walking through the sand every day, my butt looked great. So that worked out!” Ahh, the glamour of Hollywood.