It is rare for an actor to be a part of a multi-billion dollar movie franchise, but Bryce Dallas Howard and DeWanda Wise know what that’s like firsthand.
The actresses, who both starred in Jurassic World: Dominion earlier this year, are just two of the necessary pieces that have made these films, and the original Jurassic Park franchise, the massive box office hits they have been. Just weeks after Jurassic World: Dominion’s home entertainment release, the film is still on the brink of crossing the $1 billion threshold at the global box office, currently sitting at $979.9 million. Jurassic World amassed a total of $1.6 billion since its 2015 release, while its sequel Fallen Kingdom made $1.3 billion globally. Regardless of how some fans or critics felt about the films, the numbers don’t lie.
Howard has been part of the Jurassic World franchise since the start. The actress played Claire Dearing, who was the park operations manager at Jurassic World. After the collapse of the park, she realized the mistakes she had made by working for the company, and in Fallen Kingdom viewers learned that she founded the Dinosaur Protection Group to help the remaining dinosaurs survive.
Wise joined the franchise’s final film as Kayla Watts, who is a contract pilot who works for Biosyn by helping them transport dinosaurs. Wise’s character in Dominion follows a similar path as Claire’s. When Kayla witnesses an injustice, she then joins Claire and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) in their mission to rescue their child Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) who has been kidnapped by the corrupt company.
Women have always been at the center of these franchises. Jurassic Park introduced paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), who inspired a generation of young women. In Dominion, Kayla, Claire, and Dr. Sattler all join forces to fight a common enemy and escape dinosaurs, and their presence in the film enriches the story and allows women viewers to feel represented in these types of blockbuster films. The women are all just as capable, strong, intelligent, and equipped to help the group find their way out of danger as the men are—and director Colin Trevorrow made it a point to have more women on the poster than men this time around.
Reboots can work but only when done well. People kept returning to theaters for each one of this franchise’s films thanks to the creators’ devotion to doing right by the original novels and the Jurassic Park films, adding more representation, while also maintaining the dinosaur action fans know and love. “It’s a wonderful experience because you just can’t center it on yourself at any point and you can’t attribute the success of any of these to you in any way shape or form,” Howard tells Complex. “Michael Crichton created it, and Steven Spielberg birthed it and that cinema, that legacy that exists in cinema because of it, we’re just riding on those coattails.”
Complex attended a celebration of the ending of the Jurassic World franchise in Malta, where some of the action-packed Dominions scenes were filmed. We caught up with Howard and Wise to chat about being part of the iconic films, representing women, and why they think the franchise was so successful. Check out our interview with the actresses below.
