JURASSIC PERKS
His rise to stardom was slow and steady, but after ‘Guardians’ and landing a role in a dinosaur blockbuster, Chris Pratt is getting used to living famously By Ian Spelling
don’t know if I’ve been able to fully digest everything that’s going on around me. I’m just taking it a step at a time
Chris Pratt is still Chris Pratt, but the world around him has changed — and in a hurry.
He’d been working consistently since 2000, and until last year was best known for his long-running stints as Bright Abbott on Everwood (2002-2006) and Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), as well as for supporting roles in such films as Strangers with Candy (2005), Moneyball (2011) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Then along came 2014 with a game-changing two-punch: The Lego Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy. Both movies featured Pratt in leading roles and both scaled the box-office heights, both in the United States and overseas. His profile skyrocketed and the blockbuster offers came fast and furious — and will doubtless do so even more after Thursday, when Pratt will open in the starring role in Jurassic World, the fourth film in the popular Jurassic Park series.
“It’s an exciting time,” Pratt said, speaking by telephone from a Manhattan hotel. “I don’t know if I’ve been able to fully digest everything that’s going on around me. I’m just taking it a step at a time, and ultimately I’ve realised — based simply on how fast this has all happened — how temporary this all is.
“So I’m definitely stopping to smell the roses and enjoy what’s happening as it happens,” he said. “And I’m doing that because I know that, as quickly as it comes, it can go away.”
Pratt, who will turn 36 on June 21, also thinks that his ever-so-slow rise through the Hollywood hierarchy has served him well as his star has shone brighter and brighter.
“It’s made all the difference in the world, really,” he said. “I’ve been acting for 13, 14 years, and I’ve been successful that long, I guess, because I wasn’t waiting tables anymore. So, for me, I’ve never felt any low points. I was making a living as an actor, which was my dream. I did 11 years of television, and that felt great.
“Obviously my career has changed drastically in the past couple of years, with Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie, and with the anticipation for Jurassic World,” Pratt continued. “Things have definitely changed for me, and I recognise that, but from the time before that, when I was basically a working actor, I was able to see friends go through big moments. I’d see how it could be exciting, but it could be stressful too, and I’d think to myself, ‘If I ever get followed by people, or the paparazzi take my picture, I’m never going to complain about it’.
“Of course, now that’s not true,” he admitted. “I complain about it sometimes. It’s different when you’re in it. But I don’t complain about it that much.”
It helps to be grounded. Pratt met actress Anna Faris in 2007, while making the film Take Me Home Tonight (2011), and they married in 2009. Their son, Jack, will turn three in August.
“I have a good, stable foundation,” Pratt said. “Thank God, because if I were single and didn’t have that structure in my life, it’d be a very
scary and wild place to be. I also have relationships with people that are not new, so they’re not based on where I am now, on this new structure.
“That’s all very comforting,” he continued, “because I imagine for teens who suddenly get famous, they’re questioning these new people in their lives and their motives. I’m happy to make new friends, but I have got my core group of friends, and they were with me when I was starting out.” Pratt laughed. “Somebody wrote — either online or on a T-shirt, I don’t remember where I saw it — something really great,” he said. “It read, ‘If you don’t accept me at my Andy Dwyer, you don’t get me at my Star-Lord.’ ”
Pratt will reach for the brass ring again with Jurassic World. It takes place 22 years after the events of the original film, which was directed by Steven Spielberg, who’s on board Jurassic World as an executive producer, with Colin Treverrow directing.
As always in the franchise, people are meddling with nature for financial gain and in the name of entertainment — and, as always, there’s a price to be paid for such hubris.
“In this instance people are bored with dinosaurs,” Pratt said. “Going to Jurassic Park is like going to the zoo. Kids would rather just play with their mobile devices. They’re not captivated by the dinosaurs.”
Desperate to bring the “wow” factor back to Jurassic Park, the folks at Masrani Global Corporation have created a fearsome Frankenstein’s monster of a dinosaur, the Indominus rex. Of course the Indominus rex runs amok, and it’s Owen (Pratt), a resourceful animal behaviourist, who must ride to the rescue.
“Owen is a guy with a past and some darkness to him,” Pratt says. “He lives on an island for a reason. The big thing for me was to not get into funny-guy mode. Colin didn’t want that. He didn’t want Andy Dwyer in Jurassic Park. I liked that challenge.”
Pratt saw the original Jurassic Park (1993) in a theatre as an impressionable teenager, and it helped shape the path he chose to take toward acting. Mission 1 on Jurassic World was to not tarnish the reputation of that first film, a tough task considering the cynicism surrounding the endless parade of reboots, remakes and reimaginings of beloved movies in recent years.
“I hear that, and I share in some of that,” Pratt said. “Sometimes I want to see something original too. But when Colin pitched this idea to me, I wanted to get on board. And ... ”
Pratt stopped dead in his track. He’d gotten a little ahead of himself. Remember, he said, Guardians of the Galaxy had yet to be released when he began negotiations for Jurassic World. At the time Pratt simply thought Owen could be a great role to play.
“You can’t be too critical when you’re not there yet,” the actor said. “You get to be more critical when more things are offered to you. There was a time in my career when I couldn’t be critical at all. I was essentially at the mercy of other people’s decisions, and I’d do anything anyone hired me to do. I just wanted to work. But I was shooting Guardians and starting to cross over, so it was important to me that Jurassic World be as good as Jurassic Park.
“I didn’t want to be part of the team that screwed it up. Colin told me the pitch, the reasoning behind this story and how it was relevant to now. It just made such sense. I thought, ‘Wow, buddy, you really cracked the code.’
“This is timely and relevant and scary and fun,” Pratt concluded. “And I think it ultimately does a good job of doing the original film justice.”
Up next for Pratt is The Magnificent Seven, which is in production now. Pratt spent months riding horses, shooting guns and reading Larry McMurtry books to prepare for the western, which co-stars Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington.
There also are rumblings that he’ll play Indiana Jones in a new series of Indy adventures, but Pratt dismissed the rumours as rumours ... for now, teasing that he has had no official conversations about that, but that he missed a telephone call recently from “a number I didn’t recognise”, and it might have been Steven Spielberg.
Odds are that, after he wraps The Magnificent Seven, Pratt will reprise his role as Peter Quill/Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy 2.
Until recently, Pratt noted, he had no idea what returning writer/ director James Gunn had planned for the sequel. Now he does.
“James has given me the pitch for exactly what Guardians 2 is going to be,” the actor said, “and all I hope to do is give myself 100%, completely over to James, because the idea is so [incredibly] amazing.
“I just want him to direct me to fulfil his vision, because it is just so awesome,” Pratt concluded. “I cannot wait for everyone to see what he has in store for us.”
There was a time in my career when I couldn’t be critical at all. I was at the mercy of other people’s decisions, and I’d do anything anyone hired me to do