Sam Neill reveals all about ‘surviving’ his time shooting Jurassic World Dominion

The lead of the “legacy” Jurassic Park cast reveals how he played ukulele with Jeff Goldblum on piano to help survive four months in a Covid hotel bubble shooting the latest film of the franchise.

The first time Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum met to film Jurassic Park in 1992, a hurricane raged around them.

Hurricane Iniki hit the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i in September that year, destroying towns and Steven Spielberg’s film set as the cast and crew huddled in a makeshift shelter in the ballroom of their hotel.

When they met again in 2020 to film the sixth film in the franchise – Jurassic World Dominion - they were again thrown together by unusual circumstances, this time in the form of a pandemic.

“We’re not just friends, we’re survivors,” Neill laughs about his friendship with Dern and Goldblum.

“We shot this whole thing during Covid,” he adds about filming Jurassic World Dominion.

“We were cloistered away in a little hotel in the middle of Buckinghamshire, which was very close to the studio, and that was all we knew for four months.

“We just had each other, we became very close once again. We weren’t allowed out, we could go for walks in the park that surrounded the hotel, but that was it.

Chris Pratt as Owen Grady in Jurassic World Dominion.

“So we were very dependent on each other’s company, but happily we all love each other, it could have been intolerable.

“It really is (a unique kind of quarantine). If you’re going to be locked down, to be locked down with people who are a lot of fun, there’s a lot to be said for it.”

Neill turns his attention from filming during quarantine - filling the downtime playing ukulele to Goldblum’s piano accompaniment – to the nerve-wracking business of the film’s premiere.

Jurassic World Dominion will signify the conclusion to the popular series and the first time the “legacy” cast of Neill, Dern and Goldblum come together with the “world” cast of Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt and DeWanda Wise.

The movie was initially due to be released in mid-2021 but was held back so it could have a big screen premiere – “to watch it on a tablet would be a crime,” says Neill.

The Jurassic movies are the 10th highest-grossing film franchise at the box office ever, earning more than $5 billion between them.

Jurassic World alone, released in 2015, earned $1.67 billion and Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, released in 2018, added $1.3 billion to the kitty.

So, big things are expected of Jurassic World Dominion when it opens this week.

Neill, who appeared in the first and third Jurassic Park films, says he was a little skeptical when he was first approached by director Colin Trevorrow to reprise the role of paleontologist, Dr Alan Grant.

Sam Neill in a scene from the movie Jurassic Park, which is being re-released in 3D. Picture: UPI Media.

“I wasn’t particularly interested in coming back and just being a sort of token cameo,” Neill admits.

“I was at a place called Stiges outside of Barcelona where they have an annual film festival devoted to horror and sci-fi and every year they give a lifetime award to someone who has given service to those genres throughout their career. And they considered that I had done my bit.

“Colin Trevorrow…was also there and we were talking about whether we should do (Jurassic World Dominion).

“The jury was still out because I hadn’t seen a script but Colin and I had lunch and he talked at length with great enthusiasm about what he wanted to do with us and I was convinced.

“So I left that festival with a strange - it looks like King Kong - statue under one arm and some future dinosaurs under the other.”

Actor Sam Neill with Laura Dern in scene from film "Jurassic Park".

Jurassic Park Dominion takes place four years after Isla Nublar - the site of the theme park that featured dinosaurs cloned from prehistoric DNA - is destroyed.

The site’s destruction has allowed the dinosaurs to roam throughout the world and live alongside humans, but this latest chapter sees the protagonists fight to establish the humans as the dominant species.

“I’m really looking forward to people seeing it, there’s a lot of anticipation all around the world,” Neill says.

“It had to be postponed for a year because there were no cinemas open. But now the world is opening up and people are happy to go back into the cinema and enjoy the experience of a big screen and a really big movie, and trust me, this isn’t just big, it’s huge.”

A lot has been made of the fact the two casts are coming together for the grand finale in an old meets new merge.

It begs the question – who will dominate?

Sam Neill (centre) in 1996 featuring in a scene from the film Jurassic Park.

“They’re the nicest people imaginable, and it’s really their franchise now,” Neill says of the “world” cast.

“They were not only immensely pleased to see us and welcoming, they were also - and there was no need for this - but they were also very respectful and that is what took me by surprise.

“There was plenty of (pranks) on set,” Neill says of the months the actors spent working and quarantining together.

“But Jeff drives me crazy because he’s so talented and one of the things he’s really good at is that he’s a very good jazz pianist so we had a lot of sing-a-longs.

Jurassic Park co-stars Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum spotted in Sydney. Picture: Instagram

“Occasionally we’d jam together, I’d get out my ukulele and strum ineffectually along to his very, very sophisticated piano playing.”

From the big screen to the small screen, Neill is also looking forward to the premiere of a new series he has been working on for Foxtel called The Twelve.

It follows the trial of a woman accused of murdering her child and the 12 jurors who must decide her fate.

“I have high hopes that it will become one of those series you will want to binge,” Neill says of the series which will air from June 21.

Jurassic World Dominion is in cinemas from June 9.