Scarlett Johansson loves Jurassic Park so much that she had no issue pitching herself to franchise guru Steven Spielberg when she got word that a new installment was in the works. But she did have a dilemma: Play it cool or go full fangirl?
“I had a meeting with him and I don’t actually know if he knew the depths of my Jurassic fandom, but I’m hoping that no one explained it to him too thoroughly because it maybe would’ve come off as being a little too much,” Johansson explained to The Hollywood Reporter during a recent interview about her Cannes Film Festival selection Eleanor the Great. “Although knowing Steven now, he was excited when I shared with how much it would mean to me to play any part in Jurassic. I could’ve played it cooler and maybe I wouldn’t have gotten it.”
Got it she did, and audiences will soon have the chance to see the fangirl-turned-franchise star when Universal Pictures’ Jurassic World Rebirth hits theaters on July 2. The entry marks a new era in the Jurassic Park universe and finds Johansson starring opposite a cast that includes Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain and Ed Skrein.
Directed by Gareth Edwards from a script by David Koepp, Jurassic World Rebirth picks up five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion at a time when the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.
Johansson stars as Zora Bennett, a covert operations expert who is contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure the genetic material. When Zora’s operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on a forbidden island that had once housed an undisclosed research facility for Jurassic Park.
“Unbelievable” is how Johansson describes the fact that she’s in the new installment. “I’ve been trying to get into a Jurassic movie for, I don’t know, 15 years or something,” she continued. “I was so stoked that it all came together.”
Johansson joined Ali and their boss Edwards for a Universal Pictures presentation during CinemaCon on April 2. After Johansson detailed her love of all things Jurassic Park and revealed that she pitched herself to Spielberg, Edwards quipped that she was considered “too expensive” to join the franchise.
(Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for CinemaCon)
Like most things in Hollywood, it all came down to timing. “When I first heard that there was a new Jurassic movie coming, that it was written with a female lead who was the age that I could fit into, and that it was happening during a time period that I could shoot, it was particularly surreal,” Johansson said. “I was actually in the middle of making Eleanor — we were filming it at the time — so there was a lot happening at the time. I had to compartmentalize my nervous excitement for the job in front of me while also focusing on making it work. I would have these really geeked out, fangirl moments and then be, like, ‘OK, put that away for a second.’”
Johansson’s fandom dates back to the release of the original Jurassic Park in the summer of 1993. She was only 8 years old at the time, and on the verge of making her big screen debut in North. “It was such a formative moviegoing experience for me. It was like nothing any of us had seen before. The effects were extraordinary. It was the perfect mix of CGI, puppetry, an incredible score, a mix of drama with some comedy, it was gory but not too gory, it was scary but not too scary. The kids were great in it. It hit every part of what makes a movie great in a theater, and it felt like everyone was having such a collective experience. It was so thrilling and has stayed with me forever. Those kinds of movies are rare, and I’m here for them. I’m here to be carried away, entertained and thrilled.”
She’s become such an obsessed fan that when the first Jurassic World film came out in 2015, she happened to be on a job with her Marvel Cinematic Universe colleagues so she organized a group outing. “I love to go to these movies with total abandon, grab a huge bucket of popcorn and some Raisinets and just disappear into the film. I’m such a fan,” she said. “When the new Jurassic World came out, we were in New Mexico filming one of the Avengers films, and I set up this weekend outing. We took a big group and ate chicken fingers and nachos and yelled at the screen. I was so pumped that there was a new generation of Jurassic. Now that I get to be in one, it’s just crazy.”
And she learned a lesson along the way: “It taught me that if you are enthusiastic about a project, it is actually good to share your enthusiasm. You don’t have to dumb it down or play it cool.”
