-Jeff, wonderful to see you. How are you?
-It's very wonderful to see you, Seth.
I am...good,
everything considered, you know.
My heart goes out to all those
who are not so fortunate, of course,
but, for now, we're okay.
I'm here with my family in England.
We're shootin' that "Jurassic World" movie
and they've put their heart and soul into the protocols
and we're safe and having a creative blast, you know.
-That's really nice.
You were one of the first productions to go back,
the new "Jurassic Park" film.
And I think one of the things that was nice is not just
the safety protocols you were talking about,
but this is the first time that you and Sam Neill
and Laura Dern have been together
for 30 years, correct?
-Yes, yes! That's right.
Our characters, certainly,
oh, we've been in touch here and there.
-Yeah. -But that's right.
Our characters, Sam Neill's character
and Laura Dern, we're back together.
Colin Trevorrow, great writer-director,
is directing it. He's fantastic.
But, of course, Chris Pratt is in it,
Bryce Dallas Howard,
and Mamoudou Athie,
DeWanda Wise, BD Wong, Justice Smith.
There's a whole coterie of luminaries.
-[ Laughs ] How do your children --
I know we have kids that are of similar age.
Are they enjoying England, so far?
-Well, they are!
They are.
Of course, we have a very special
view of it right here, but this is a great place.
They love it.
I'm around all the time.
-Yeah. -And Emilie's mom
is here, actually,
and so we've got lotsa -- It's very cozy.
And they're havin' a good time.
They're doin' all kinda --
They're just -- They're loving it.
They feed the ducks.
They touch cows.
They were kind of -- Seth.
They feed donkeys.
They're good.
-That's wonderful to hear.
-I have a piano in my room
and Charlie's taking piano lessons -- had been --
but I'm taking him through.
Not only do I do my piano homework,
but I'm taking him through his Suzuki lesson every day.
He's proceeding apace. -Now, tell me,
how young were you when you started,
when you got your first lesson?
-I think, as I remembered, ten-ish or nine-ish, or ten-ish.
He's, for heaven's sakes, five.
He's way ahead of me.
Not to mention the bicycle.
I think around the same time, ten,
I started get on the bike.
He's whizzing around, you know.
They're most precocious. -And is he taking to the piano?
Do you feel like he has a natural skill for it?
-Well, who knows?
I don't think he's any Mozart, but --
There's no indication of that, yet.
But he's kinda like me, disciplined.
It's around all the time.
He sees me playing all the time, so he likes to check in.
We go through the stuff and I'll be darned if he isn't,
you know, playing a bunch of stuff! You know.
It's thrilling for me. -That's amazing.
-It's sometimes maddening for me, too.
I'm very kind of, around piano,
I get very [ Strikes hands ] kind of, you know,
I'm not like the father in "Shine."
I'm not, you know, a maniac.
I'm not gonna, you know, but... [ Laughter ]
But I'm, you know, "Focus now."
I want him to be focused.
I'm a little tough, but, you know,
I think it's good.
He's taking to it, yeah. He's doing okay.
The other one -- the other one is taking little lessons.
River is taking lessons.
Horrible, horrible.
He comes in and all I'm supposed to do is,
if he doesn't do anything, which he doesn't,
is take his fingers like a puppet
and push them against the thing.
I play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" every day
with his right hand, his left hand,
as he's moaning and stuff, and I just kinda do it.
He says, "Do it quick, as quick as you can,"
'cause afterwards, we give him Gummy Bears.
So that's what he likes. -Oh, well, there you go.
You have to reward them, somehow.
I'd also like to say we've been doing this show --
you know, we've done more than a thousand of these
and you're the first person
to reference the father in "Shine."
And I really appreciate 'cause I feel like
that's a cultural reference we've lost over the years.
[ Laughing ] -Oh, yeah, no.
We have to appeal to the kids.
They love that "Shine" stuff, yeah.
-[ Laughing ] -Call me a panderer,
but I don't care, you know.
-Yeah, you like to play to your teen base.
Hey, I wanna ask about this.
I imagine one of the things --
again, it was groundbreaking tech
in the first "Jurassic Park" film
that, now, must seem incredibly dated,
and I think you must look back.
They were actually pretty dangerous,
the early T. rexes, yes?
-I know what you're talking about.
Well, not really.
There's no such thing as dinosaurs.
-[ Laughing ] -But, yes, it was dangerous back then.
The -- [ Laughs ]
I hate to be the one to break it to you, you know.
-No, somebody had to.
-Yeah, there's no Easter Bunny, either. No Easter Bunny.
-Aw, man. -But, yeah, in the first one,
Steven Spielberg, if I can invoke his name,
was off-screen going, "Rawr! Rawr!
Everybody look at the tennis ball. Rawr! Rawr!"
In this one, you know, they have sound effects,
so you hear dinosaurs.
And they've got the big dinosaurs
and it's great, you know.
But Stan Winston had, back then,
won the Oscar for what he did.
But, they were new, they were groundbreaking
and, on occasion,
there was T. rex that was life-size,
that, when you went into the sound stage, they said,
"Don't go anywhere near it
because it can get kind of --"
and we're still trying
to figure out how to operate it.
So it can go into kinda unexpected convulsions
and [ Strikes palm ] drop on you or attack you
or it gets, you know.
We didn't wanna get killed
by the fake T. rex, so, you know.
-Yeah, that would've been --
certainly would've made the press junket a lot harder,
if one of you had died via the mechanical T. rex.
-It would've been dour.
-[ Laughing ] -It would've been dark days.