Scarlett Johansson can now say sheโs an official star of the โJurassic Parkโ franchise, an accomplishment thatโs been 30 years in the making.
โIt was a childhood dream of mine to be in this movie,โ the actor told Craig Melvin during a recent segment on TODAY. โIโve been trying to get in the ‘Jurassic’ universe for three decades.โ
In the latest installment of the series, โJurassic World Rebirth,โ Johansson plays Zora Bennett, a mercenary leading a team of operatives on a secret mission to track down dinosaur DNA. The hitch? Itโs on a forbidden island in the middle of the ocean and the inhabitants are, well, positively prehistoric.
โI saw the movie โJurassic Parkโ when I was 10 years old in the theater and it was so impactful,โ Johansson said. โLike the entire audience, I was completely transfixed, mesmerized, carried away, terrified, all of that stuff, and itโs part of the formative part of my childhood.โ
How did she finally land the gig?
โIt turns out that if you harass Frank Marshall enough, you could get a job,โ she joked, referring to one of the film’s producers.
Clocking in at two hours and 14 minutes, โJurassic World Rebirthโ is an action-packed, dino-filled romp that also stars Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Mahershala Ali, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ed Skrein, David Iacono and Luna Blaise as a mismatched crew of castaways fighting for survival on the tropical island.
To ensure the movieโs authenticity, Johansson says, the cast and crew filmed at various exotic locations around the world, including Malta and Thailand.
โThe environment was authentic and so it felt that we were in the middle of the jungle because we were in the middle of the jungle,โ she tells TODAY.com in an interview.
According to the โAvengersโ actor, working in the jungle didnโt come without its fair share of perils, including uninvited guests on the set.
โYouโd be making coffee at the coffee table and then two minutes later (someone would say), โYou know what they just found at the coffee table? They just got a scorpion.โ And youโre like, โWhat!?โ Like, I was just making myself a coffee right there,โ says Johansson. โWe had a venomous pit crew. Isnโt that crazy?โ
Filming โJurassic World Rebirthโ also required Johansson to scale a steep rock wall. Granted, it was built on a set, but according to Johansson, it was still “pretty high up.”
Even so, Johansson, 40, says she wasn’t daunted given the rigging crew had her back (literally) and that sheโd been trained on a rock-climbing wall ahead of shooting the scenes.
โThe heights is not, like, my greatest phobia,โ she tells TODAY.com. โMy greatest phobia is cockroaches, and there were plenty of those, too โ but not on the abseiling wall.โ
Instead, Johansson likely encountered them while shooting in Thailand’s rainforests.
โThailand had some pretty serious creature critters,โ she says.
It begs the question: Were there days during the making of โJurassic World Rebirthโ when she wished she was on a traditional film set instead of the remote reaches of the world?
โYes, all of the days. Every one of them,โ she joked while talking with Craig on TODAY.
โIโm from New York. Iโve got to say Iโm a city girl. … It is amazing to shoot in the majestic settings that we were in,โ she explained. But it didn’t come without the obvious drawbacks.
โWe did shoot during the monsoon season,” Johansson added. “I would say not as ideal as in the not-monsoon season. I watched Mahershala Ali melt like a human candle.โ
