Austin Butler Trained To The Point Of Throwing Up For Dune: Part Two

There's a long list of good reasons to throw up at work. Alcohol poisoning, for example, or being scheduled to clean the bathrooms, or catching your reflection in the mirror and realizing that time's terrible dance never stops and that you've traded your youth for dental insurance.

Not on most people's shortlist of acceptable excuses for yakking up their breakfast: Wanting to be a more convincingly shredded spaceman. Then again, most people aren't Austin Butler. Neither are most horses. That's not really relevant.

What is relevant is Butler's role in the highly anticipated upcoming blockbuster "Dune: Part Two," where America's second-favorite Elvis is set to play the treacherous Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. He won't be the first actor to tackle the character, but as anyone who saw Sting in his v-neck metal briefs can attest, it's a role that calls for intense physical conditioning — to hear Butler describe it, maybe a little too intense.

Like so many stories about totally throwing up, this one starts on the YouTube series "Hot Ones," where Butler was asked about his training regimen for "Dune: Part 2." Maybe it was the young star's trademark shoot-from-the-lip, forthright nature, or maybe it was the intense psychological stress of having eaten enough Scovilles to render his large intestine a chemical weapon. Either way, he didn't mince words, saying that his trainer would "basically just work [him] until [he] would throw up every time."

Said trainer — a gentleman named Duffy Gaver whose credits include turning Chris Hemsworth into a slab of Outback steak for the MCU — apparently employs a real take-no-prisoners approach to beefing up theater kids. Gaver " ... doesn't really count reps," Butler confided. "He just goes for it and you're just going and you're like 'how many of these am I going to do?' And once you get to the point where you're dying and you can hardly do another, he goes 'Alright, do ten more.'"

Is there a lesson to be learned here? That with effort and persistence, results are possible, but also you'll throw up sometimes? That our expectations for physical perfection from celebrities have outpaced what's healthy or even reasonable? That's not for us to say. If anything, maybe the takeaway is how weird it is that Butler didn't throw up more when he made "Elvis." That sandwich didn't seem like it was part of a balanced breakfast.