Scarlett Johansson describes the challenges of shooting 'Jurassic World Rebirth'

NBC News

01-07-2025

Scarlett Johansson can now say she's an official star of the 'Jurassic Park' franchise, an accomplishment that's been 30 years in the making.
'It was a childhood dream of mine to be in this movie,' the actor told Craig Melvin during a recent segment on "TODAY." 'I've been trying to get in the 'Jurassic' universe for three decades.'
In the latest installment of the series, ' Jurassic World Rebirth,' Johansson plays Zora Bennett, a mercenary leading a team of operatives on a secret mission to track down dinosaur DNA. The hitch? It's on a forbidden island in the middle of the ocean and the inhabitants are, well, positively prehistoric.
'I saw the movie 'Jurassic Park' when I was 10 years old in the theater and it was so impactful,' Johansson said. 'Like the entire audience, I was completely transfixed, mesmerized, carried away, terrified, all of that stuff, and it's part of the formative part of my childhood.'
How did she finally land the gig?
'It turns out that if you harass Frank Marshall enough, you could get a job,' she joked, referring to one of the film's producers.
Clocking in at two hours and 14 minutes, 'Jurassic World Rebirth' 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 movie's authenticity, Johansson says, the cast and crew filmed at various exotic locations around the world, including Malta and Thailand.
'The 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,' she tells TODAY.com in an interview.
According to the 'Avengers' actor, working in the jungle didn't come without its fair share of perils, including uninvited guests on the set.
'You'd be making coffee at the coffee table and then two minutes later (someone would say), 'You know what they just found at the coffee table? They just got a scorpion.' And you're like, 'What!?' Like, I was just making myself a coffee right there,' says Johansson. 'We had a venomous pit crew. Isn't that crazy?'
Filming ' Jurassic World Rebirth ' 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 she'd been trained on a rock-climbing wall ahead of shooting the scenes.
'The heights is not, like, my greatest phobia,' she tells TODAY.com. 'My greatest phobia is cockroaches, and there were plenty of those, too — but not on the abseiling wall.'
Instead, Johansson likely encountered them while shooting in Thailand's rainforests.
'Thailand had some pretty serious creature critters,' she says.
It begs the question: Were there days during the making of 'Jurassic World Rebirth' when she wished she was on a traditional film set instead of the remote reaches of the world?
'Yes, all of the days. Every one of them,' she joked while talking with Craig on "TODAY."
'I'm from New York. I've got to say I'm a city girl. ... It is amazing to shoot in the majestic settings that we were in,' she explained. But it didn't come without the obvious drawbacks.
'We 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.'