Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are back together in the Jurassic World sequel but, as they tell Laura Harding, they can’t get their kids to care

CHRIS PRATT is kind of a big deal in Hollywood these days. With his Parks And Recreation days far behind him, he's now a major box office draw in Guardians Of The Galaxy, The Lego Movie and Jurassic World. But the one person who still isn't impressed by all this is his five-year-old son Jack, who he shares with ex-wife Anna Faris.

"It's been really important to both me and Jack's mum to instil this idea that we're just actors," he says. "It's not that big of a deal, but then he really adopted it and I was like urrrrgh. I'm like, 'Kid, listen. It's not really a big deal, it's just what we do' but then I'll say, 'Hey, did you see me outrun that dinosaur?' and he replies, 'Dad you're just an actor, it's not that big of a deal'. He adopted it too well. He doesn't know about fake humility."

Bryce Dallas Howard, his co-star in both Jurassic World and its upcoming sequel Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, is sitting next to him in a London hotel room and bursts out laughing. As a mother of two, she knows this feeling all too well.

"It's hard to impress your own children, it really is," she says. To add insult to injury, Jack is now more impressed by the people who play his dad's character, raptor trainer Owen Grady, at the Universal Studios theme park.

"He went and saw the Jurassic World ride and there is a guy who's dressed up as my character and he'd keep these fake dinosaurs and raptors at bay. Then Jack came home and goes, 'Dad, today I went to Universal. Guess what I saw? The real Owen!' I was like, 'What?!'"

Pratt looks indignant: "Our kids don't seem to give a s***."

Howard, who is mother to 11-year-old son Theodore and six-year-old daughter Beatrice, is actually faring slightly better.

"My son is in fifth grade now and so there's a lot of play dates and there's a bunch of boys over at my house every single weekend. There are a few mornings where I've woken up to the sound of Jurassic World playing on the TV. They've snuck in and it's 5am and they're all watching Jurassic World and that is the coolest for me."

Their shared experience as parents is part of the reason Pratt and Howard have such an easy banter and an apparently close relationship. They giggle together frequently and make jokes at each other's expense.

It must have made working together again on the new dinosaur-fest - which follows the events of 2015's box office smash and sees Owen and Howard's Claire Dearing return to Isla Nublar to rescue the dinosaurs there before a huge volcano erupts and kills them all - a whole lot easier.

"Right away, we fell into a very natural dynamic and partnership," Pratt says. "It was really nice to have that going into this film. We definitely leaned on each other a lot and I think that the dynamic between Owen and Claire is really strong. I think our friendships just deepened, we have kids the same age. You don't always get to work with people you really like and so this is a really nice experience."

It also helped plot-wise too. The new instalment, which also stars James Cromwell, Toby Jones and Rafe Spall, sees Jeff Goldblum return to the Jurassic Park franchise, and ties directly back to the original 1993 film.

"We're building on a foundation that was established in the previous Jurassic World," Howard nods. "And Jurassic World similarly was also a sequel, so we're also building on Jurassic Park. But the fact now that we've had one movie already means I was less afraid of being fired and we get to have a bit more fun."

Pratt agrees: "You know the characters, you know where you've been, you have a little security that they can't fire you, but it also comes with a whole new set of challenges in terms of how to take the story and make it global. How to go beyond the island, how to expand the story so it can truly become Jurassic World - so we traded the first challenges for a set of new challenges."

I assume they are kidding about their fears of being fired, but apparently not.

"I totally did," Pratt insists. "It's not at the forefront of my mind," Howard adds. "But I always clock when I'm past the halfway mark of shooting because I think, 'It would be really expensive to fire me now'." "And you can tell!" Pratt laughs. "She becomes a nightmare. Guess who's three hours late today?"

For the second film, the actress was more concerned about her feet than about getting fired.

If that sounds odd, then you might have missed the controversy that surrounded her character's footwear in Jurassic World, when fans of the film took issue with the fact she was running from dinosaurs in a pair of high heels. The sequel offers a cheeky nod to the furore, and the first shot of Howard is of her feet.

"I had a specific conversation that was, 'Don't put me in sneakers in the first scene, put me in heels please'. She's going to be prepared coming to the island this time. Last time she didn't say, 'OK, I'm gonna be on the island, I'm going to be running, so stilettos, that's what this calls for'. This time, she was definitely prepared, going to the island in boots.

"But when we were shooting some of the earlier scenes, it was really important to me that Claire wears heels because Claire can handle a pair of heels, she's comfortable."

  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is in cinemas now