Jonathan Bailey, who catapulted to fame in Bridgerton, wooed musical theater fans everywhere in 2024’s Wicked and this June checks a prerequisite heartthrob box of playing a nerdy paleontologist in Jurassic World Rebirth, will only earn more nerd cred with the release of a new behind-the-scenes look at his dino sequel.
Loyalists and skeptics will likely melt over the just-like-us dorkiness on display in the video titled “Jonathan Bailey Joins the Orchestra,” in which Jonathan Bailey does indeed join the Jurassic World Rebirth orchestra, conducted by two-time Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat.
”I played in an orchestra when I was 18,” Bailey says in the behind-the-scenes video, and making it sound deeply cool that he played in an orchestra when he was 18 despite there being no chance of that being cool whatsoever. “ If you could have told me at that age that one day there was an opportunity to play with a 105-piece orchestra at Abbey Road with Alexandre Desplat conducting both the John Williams score and his own original score, I would not quite believe it.”
What could have been a cheap stunt to create a moment of connection between a hot new talent and the 32-year-old score motif Williams’ cooked up for Steven Spielberg’s original film is, unfortunately, packed with clips of Bailey wailing on the clarinet and even picking up a solo from Desplat. Yes, it’s all staged and rigged so Bailey doesn’t look like total poseur but there are certain techniques you can’t fake — I could never blow through a reed the right way in order to actually play a clarinet and so I feel deeply triggered by this video.
As if the 37-year-old actor wasn’t enviable in every way — a movie star who dreams of joining the woodwind section??? — he ends on this note.
“The only thing I would say to young kids is: Find something you love and keep going because you never know when it all comes into alignment like that.”
Jurassic World Rebirth opens in theaters on July 2.