Jurassic Park’s Sam Neill Reacts After Jonathan Bailey Name Drops Him in Jurassic World Rebirth
The ripple-like reverberations of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park are still felt seven entries into the blockbuster franchise.
Like the footsteps of the mighty T. Rex, the ripple-like reverberations of Jurassic Park can be felt more than three decades later after its initial release.
No matter how far-removed the iconic franchise may seem from Steven Spielberg's groundbreaking blockbuster, the original DNA—pun intended—is still there. All of the installments that followed The Lost World never failed to pay homage to what had come before.
And 2025's Jurassic World Rebirth is no exception.
As our band of heroes make their way through a swamp on Ile Saint-Hubert, paleontologist Sam Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) reveals that his postdoc studies were spent under the legendary Alan Grant (played by Sam Neill).
What did Sam Neill think of Alan Grant reference in Jurassic World Rebirth?
"I was surprised," Neill confessed during an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "It's nice when these things refer to each other, and I thought that was respectful and good."
In the film, Loomis also states that he's been on archaeological dig sites since he was 12 years old, leading some to speculate that he is the grown-up version of the kid who dissed raptors in the '93 film before Grant scared the ever-loving bejesus out of him.
As for how the name drop came to be? Rebirth director Gareth Edwards explained that the Alan Grant name-drop came from screenwriter David Koepp, who returned to the series after writing the first two installments way back when.
"It's actually the only reference to anybody from another Jurassic film," Edwards told Entertainment Weekly in July. "Then the only thing that we did for fun, I designed a little patch that went on his bag that was the Snakewater Canyon [where we first meet Alan in Jurassic Park]."
Added Koepp: "It's a fine line. You want to acknowledge, first of all, that you exist in a world that those movies exist in. You don't ever want anything that smacks of self-congratulatory or self-love or anything like that."
Neill, of course, recently returned to the role of Dr. Grant for Xfinity's Super Bowl ad, which also saw the return of Laura Dern as Ellie Sattler and Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm.
Directed by Oscar winner Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit, Thor: Ragnarok), the Big Game spot imagines a reality where John Hammond succeeded in getting the trio of expert consultants to sign off on his ambitious dinosaur theme park.
