Jurassic World Dominion’s Mamoudou Athie Talks Creating a New Character in an Established Franchise

Jurassic World: Dominion is finally being released in June and it will feature the return of many fan-favorite stars as well as some franchise newcomers. Mamoudou Athie (Oh Jerome, No, Underwater) is playing Ramsay Cole, a highly educated employee of the powerful biotech company Biosyn and colleague to Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with Athie about his character and asked what it was like developing a role in a film filled with established characters. 

“Well, that part, I can answer that very easily. That is just none of my business. You know what I mean? I’m just like, ‘Well, here’s what I have to do. Let me just focus and hunker down and do that.’ And also just share the stage with everyone else and that was just a real blast and a pleasure to joy and everything else,” Athie explained. 

During the interview, we brought up the fact that Athie doesn’t have as many dinosaur encounters as some of his co-stars in the film, and Athie revealed that was his choice when discussing the character with director Colin Trevorrow. 

“No, I stupidly wanted it that way,” Athie revealed when asked if he was a little jealous of his fellow actors. “When I first met Colin, we talked about it. I was like, ‘I don’t really want to…’ But now after having done it, I was like, ‘That was so fun. What was I thinking?’ But who knows if that had any bearing in the story he was already creating.” He joked, “But yeah, that was certainly a conversation that I had. Really stupid and really embarrassed. Really embarrassed, America.” 

ComicBook.com also spoke with another franchise newcomer, DeWanda Wise (The Harder They Fall, She’s Gotta Have It), who plays Kayla Watts, a pilot who teams up with Clarie Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt). During the chat, Wise confirmed Kayla is bisexual.  

“It’s important, and it’s also important to me that we continue to expand the conversation beyond looking for the kiss,” Wise explained. “If you’re queer, you’re queer … I said what I said. All the time. You don’t turn it off. It doesn’t matter if your partner’s in the cockpit with you. It just is a statement of being.” She added, “So that was one of the things just in her DNA, in her dino DNA, ensuring that she is who she is. Kayla is bi, and that’s just, it is what it is.”

Jurassic World Dominion is scheduled to be released in theaters on June 10th.