It’s Jurassic June and this week we’re going back and seeing the park finally open in Jurassic World! (Queue John William’s theme playing in your head. You’re welcome.) Universal’s summer blockbuster enlisted Chris Pratt to star in their continuation of the beloved dino franchise to wrangle any prehistoric monster in case things go wrong. Hey, it’s a Jurassic movie, what can possibly go wrong? Pratt shared his excitement to be a part of Universal and Spielberg’s legacy, working with new helmer Colin Trevorrow and actress Bryce Dallas Howard, and the preparation that went into becoming badass raptor trainer Owen Grady.
Q: You’ve been known to do a lot of hunting and fishing on your downtime. How did your experience in dealing with animals influence your approach to Owen?
Chris Pratt: Yes. It’s funny I was just talking about this. I love this story because it’s true. And it’s one of those stories I will tell forever. I was on an elk hunt about eight, nine years ago. I had shot an elk the first day, so my tag was filled. I was on a hunt with these other two guys, Mike and Ian, and they didn’t have me come with them because it was a dry time of year. The Aspen leaves had fallen, it was loud and crunchy, so two less feet in the woods was better, because it was so loud. So I’m walking around camp, because they have these things called grouse. They are dumb little birds. They are like a cross between corn, and an animal that I feel like God put them to be here like, “Ah… even the dummies got to eat, so I’ll give you grouse.” I was out to shoot these grouse with the single 22, tiny little gun, basically a bb gun. So I’m out looking for grouse, and I see something and the sun is coming up behind this hill, I couldn’t really see it was a silhouette of a giant beast, I assume it was a monster bull elk. I go back quickly to the tent and radio in Mike and Ian, and say, “Hey… there is something here, I think it is a huge elk. Stand by. I am going to get a better look, but you might want to come back this way, because one of you guys should shoot this big elk.” I come back, I look up, and I don’t see it. Now I’m looking through my binoculars, and I don’t see this animal. Meanwhile, I am wearing slippers, pajamas, and I have my single shot bb gun, 22. And ten feet from me is this big bull moose. Moose are incredibly dangerous. They kill more people in North America than bears and wolves combined. Very, very dangerous animals in the wild. They’re huge, 1,000 pounds, this thing is monstrous, and I’m thinking to myself, “Oh. I’m going to die right now.” And so it’s looking at me, running its foot into the ground, and I don’t look at it in the eyes, because maybe I heard “don’t look at it in the eyes” or something. And I take a step back. And as I take a step back, it takes a step towards me, and it’s a standoff between me and this giant beast. I take another step back, and it takes another step towards me. I can still smell this creature, it’s so vivid in my brain. Steam coming out of its nose, you could see it because it’s so cold. I have this little tiny gun, I’m thinking to myself, “If it attacks me, I have to stick this little thing in its eye or something, to try to shoot it, because there is no way this thing will kill it, it will just make it mad. I take one more step, and instead of taking one step, it takes three steps towards me. And I think I nearly fainted, and then it just turns off like this and it just walked off into the wild. If anything from the wild informed me on this movie, when I am doing that scene with the raptors – I told this story to Colin, and said, “There is something really scary about having something standing in front of you, and if you step back a few inches, it comes at you a few inches. Like that suspense building that up informed me a little bit, by that experience I had in the wild.
ShockYa: So in the first Jurassic World trailer, we got to see you running with the raptors. In fact, my friend and I called it the Raptor Power Force like Chris Pratt and the Raptor Power Force and came up with a history. Was there a backstory you came up with for you and the raptors and did you call them anything as a collective?
Chris Pratt: Like did I have my own team name?
ShockYa: Yeah.
Chris Pratt: No, no I didn’t.
ShockYa: Should be Raptor Power Force.
Chris Pratt: I think Raptor Power Force, I’m gonna use that. I did some work in terms of creating the kinds of techniques this guy would use, which was a real character, this was a real opening at a park. Like, who would this guy be, because when Colin first pitched this to me, I was all over the place in terms of how I would bring it. “Oh so he’s like the Crocodile Hunter? Should I do an Australian accent?” And he’s like, “Oh no maybe not.” He was like he wants this to be real, no matter who the character is, he wanted this to seem real. We need to create an organic relationship between man and beast that’s gonna will strike some emotional cord hopefully, and people will give a shit about this relationship between this guy and his dinosaur. Which is a tough thing to try to accomplish, especially when the dinosaurs are CG animated characters. So moving forward with it, I did some research. I got to hang out with some pretty awesome animal trainers. There is this one guy, his name is Randy Miller, he owns a company called Predators In Action which is a company that trains vicious cats, bears, tigers, lions, and things like that, to do simulated attacks in shows and movies. So his tigers were in Gladiator, and the bear was in Semi-Pro, and he does one of the commercials for Puma. He’s got all kinds of amazing animals. I went to his ranch, hung out with him, spent the day seeing him interact with these animals. That was the big part of having that clicker, and the posture I adopted was part of the research that I did.
Q: Owen’s a new ultimate badass. How’d it feel to take on that character after playing another badass, Starlord in Guardians. In a way both Owen and Peter Quill are badasses, so how did you make sure that Owen was his own brand of badass?
Chris Pratt: I do feel that it is a different character. I approached it as a character who was different from Peter Quill. A huge part of that was just our directors Colin Trevorrow’s vision. He had always mentioned to me that he had this term called the third rail. The third rail for him – I didn’t grow up in a city with a subway, but apparently in a subway there are three rails, and the third one could kill you. So that was the third rail for me. He had this third rail where I start being goofy, or acting like a dipshit, or going to my normal comedic bag of tricks, some of which I used in Guardians of the Galaxy. Certainly the character from Parks and Rec Andy Dwyer is a full embodiment of that type of clowning around, that comedic shtick that I am known for–that was my third rail. If I wanted to have any fun with this, it was going to be in my repertoire between me and Claire. My relishing to be able to spar with her, kind of get her goad a little bit. That’s where I could have my fun. But for the most part, I was deadly serious. There was a bit of darkness– this guy has been through something, and it goes back to who would this guy be if this were really a job opening, and if he was the person to fill this position. We came together and decided he probably at one point trained dolphins for the navy, and saw what treatment these animals received, and it was not great for the animals. We decided the likelihood that in all the years that he has been working for the park, this isn’t his first set of raptors, and that some of the raptors didn’t make it through the training. Some of these animals died under his watch, they killed each other under his watch and there were certain techniques that didn’t work. So we’ve come a long way, and a lot of these animals have paid the sacrifice for the work that I am doing for this company. That’s pretty serious. There isn’t a lot of room for goofing around when you are playing that role, a guy who has been through combat, a combat veteran who lives on an island, who has chosen to move away from the world, and live on the dark side of an island. All that stuff is interesting and fun to see in character work. I love Peter Quill and I love Andy, and I look forward to playing Peter Quill again. It’s super fun, but this was just something a little different for me.
Q: Which dinosaur was the biggest asshole?
Chris Pratt: Which dinosaur was the biggest asshole? I guess Indominus Rex was a big asshole. Just mean, just a mean dinosaur. But like most assholes, had a tough upbringing. Kinda feel a little bit bad for it.
Q: But could you out run it in heels like Bryce?
Chris Pratt: Likely no. But I did run in heels for the first time while on the James Cordon show, and a) kinda liked the way it felt walking in them, and b) I surprised myself in running in them, kinda like tippy-toe running. But I would not be able to outrun the Indominus Rex. But with enough practice, I might be able to make it get 40 or 50 feet before I was killed.
Q: Would you consider a return to TV or are you just focusing more on movies right now?
Chris Pratt: I think, the platform for entertainment is shifting so rapidly right now. Kind of like my favorite stuff to watch is TV, because you get to watch stuff. there’s a CBS show called Mom, my very favorite show on the air, I could go on and on about it. Just the tones they hit tonally and comedically, and the actress is stunning. I would like to have a baby with her. TV is extraordinary right now. What is kind of neat about TV is that you get an opportunity to tell really rich stories over the course of 20 hours. It’s essentially like a novel of this type of medium. Film is cool. It’s about an hour and a half to two hours, typically three acts – beginning, middle, and end. And you get to go on an adventure. By the end you get a franchise where you have three chapters of a great story. But in TV, you can not only get deep into the character, but also the relationship and stories, and all the backstories and relationships with people and how those people have relationships with each other. It’s just more dense and more time to tell stories. I would definitely not rule out doing TV in the future, because I think it is a great medium for telling stories. It can be practically very nice for a family man, to have nine months out of the year in the city, where you are close to your home, for Parks and Rec, it took me seven minutes to get to work. Kind of amazing. Nine months out of the year that I would work right down the road, I’d come home for dinner every night, have my weekends at home, it was nice. Movie making, you could be half way around the world for six months. So there are amazing benefits to doing TV, and with the platform changing the way it is, I would never ever rule out doing TV again.
Jurassic World opens in theaters on June 12.