Laura Dern's Terrifying Dinosaur Experiences In Jurassic Park And Jurassic World - Interview
If you've ever jumped at an epic dinosaur moment in the "Jurassic Park" or "Jurassic World" franchises, just imagine how the actors feel. While modern movies often heavily rely on CGI and special effects, both trilogies have opted to create dinosaurs using animatronics rather than tech. Animatronics certainly make things more realistic for viewers at home and in the theater, but that means it's 10 times more terrifying for the cast in the moment.
Green and blue screens may fool audiences, but it's a tad difficult to act alongside a tennis ball on a stick — which is the reality for most scenes involving any kind of fantastical beast. Sure, even in the moment, the cast knows that they're in a movie, and the dinosaurs aren't real, but when 20-foot dinosaurs are chasing you in the woods, telling your brain that you're safe is a different story. That was the case for "Jurassic Park" staple Laura Dern, who reprised her role as Ellie Sattler in "Jurassic World Dominion."
During an exclusive interview with our sister site Slashfilm, Laura Dern revealed how terrifying it was to get chased by dinosaurs. However, there are no hard feelings. Dern still has a favorite dino.
Dinosaurs: Real or animatronic?
On working with the dinosaurs and which ones are the coolest, she said, "In this film? I mean, to work with a Giganotosaurus that's a practical dinosaur, standing in front of you, in its terror and enormity, is pretty mind-blowing. That was pretty mind-blowing." Yet the dinosaurs aren't here to play around.
"The Dimetrodon is not friendly. That was also a practical dinosaur chasing me. When you are acting and something that terrifying is chasing you through caves in the pitch black, you do not think about puppeteers having anything to do with it," she explained, alluding to the horrors of getting chased by the massive beast. "You are running for your life, that's all I can tell you. So that's pretty memorable, but I'm pretty nostalgic from my first experience seeing the Triceratops in the first movie, as I walked through a field in Kauai, in Hawaii, and saw that animal laying there and fell so in love."
Is everyone ready for a "Jurassic Park" conspiracy theory? Maybe the dinosaurs are real, Dern jokingly insisted: "So I am one of those people who still believes we actually filmed with dinosaurs, and they are real, and nobody's going to make me believe different."
"Jurassic World Dominion" is now playing in theaters.