Jurassic World Dominion: Laura Dern Reveals Her Requirements For Playing Ellie Sattler Again
When it comes to Jurassic World Dominion, there's a lot that fans are looking forward to but the biggest is perhaps some major Jurassic Park franchise returns with the upcoming film seeing Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum all reprising their roles from the first film. While Goldblum has appeared in one of the Jurassic World movies — specifically Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom — Dern's last appearance was in 2001's Jurassic Park 3. Now, Dern reveals what she needed in order to come back to playing Dr. Ellie Sattler again and it turns out it comes down to both authenticity to the story and evolution of her character as a scientist. Speaking with ComicBook.com, Dern explained that she spoke with director Colin Trevorrow about the character.
"Luckily, they were very open to those and in agreement, and it was very important to Colin, who cares deeply about the environment, and I think feels proud and grateful that we have a seamless opportunity in this franchise to talk about what's most important right now, in terms of protecting our home, Earth," Dern said. "It's embedded in this franchise. It's in the original book. So, it was a seamless conversation. But to me, how she'd evolved in her area of science that she had studied as a paleontologist, our former extinction, and would have evolved as a soil scientist whose focus would be climate change to avoid another extinction. Made perfect sense and he agreed completely. And she wouldn't not be an activist. It's Dr. Ellie Sattler, come on. And if boys want to join her and use their voice, they might have an amazing experience. But they better abandon dig sites and get with the program and start saving the world."
Dern isn't the only returning Jurassic Park star who has spoken out about returning for Jurassic World Dominion. Neil is also returning, reprising his role as Dr. Alan Grant in the film, though it apparently took a little bit of convincing to get him to sign on. Neill previously told Gizmodo it was a long lunch with Trevorrow — and the filmmaker's love for the characters — that eventually won him over.
"Oh, no, I wasn't automatically," Neill explained. "I was getting rumors from my agent that Universal was talking about this, and they wanted me and Jeff and Laura to be in it, but I didn't really want to be in something where I'd just be playing a cameo. That was not really interesting to me. But I went to Sitges to a film festival there and I met [co-writer and director] Colin Trevorrow there. He took me out to lunch. We had a long lunch, quite a lot of paella and a bottle or two of [indistinguishable] and yeah, and I was well persuaded by the end of that. So that was about October before we started shooting. We were supposed to start in February, I think. It ended up being more like May, June, of the next year, 2020. So, it's been quite a long time in gestation when you think about it."
He added of Trevorrow, "Well, mostly his great and abiding affection for those characters and how he wanted them to be completely integrated into the Jurassic World world. And so that persuaded me. And also, the idea of hanging out with Jeff and Laura again which, of course, is an attractive one in itself."
Jurassic World Dominion opens in theaters on June 10th.
Are you excited for the return of Dern's Dr. Ellie Sattler? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.