When Jurassic World stomped (chomped?) through box office records earlier this year — its 1.6 billion dollar box office haul made it the third highest-grossing film of all time— there were three takeaways/talking points: dino nostalgia, originally instilled by 1993's Jurassic Park, is always en vogue, Chris Pratt is a raptor-whispering movie star stud, and why the heck was Bryce Dallas Howard running around the jungle in heels?

Howard has a solid answer to that final query. In fact, not only does she understand the many complaints about her character's wardrobe choice, she was relieved by them. Cosmopolitan.com recently caught up with the actress ahead of the movie's Oct. 20 release on Blu-ray and DVD to get her thoughts on heelgate, why she appreciates audience and critical concern over her character not being a function of the plot, and why she will not be wearing heels in the 2018 sequel.

When a film of yours is opening, what is your method for watching that? Do you shut yourself off opening weekend? Do you look at any reviews?

I'm pretty cautious. I don't go on the Internet at all. At all. I'm pretty cautious about reviews in general. I think if I was the filmmaker, I would approach it really differently, but as an actor you go, and you do your thing, and you sort of have to release everything and surrender it to the process. You don't know what's going to end up in the movie or what's not, how it's going to be edited together, so I don't necessarily absorb what's being said or anything like that.

The constant questions and conversations about your character running around in heels — how did you receive that? Is there anything to be learned or discussed?

Well, specifically with the heels, this character needed to seem ill-equipped to be in the jungle. She was somebody who looks like she belongs in a corporate environment for a reason, because she was someone who was disconnected from the animals and disconnected from that reality and disconnected from herself. She doesn't at all expect that she's going to be tromping through the jungle, and I'm really glad that we didn't make the choice for me to be barefoot, because that would have also been kind of dangerous.

I have to say, I feel really relieved at the amount of sensitivity that people have to women and women's roles in films, particularly large films. Even though ultimately what you see in the movie — you realize I wasn't just a function of the plot, or Chris's sidekick or whatever; she is actually the character that goes through the biggest transformation — I did appreciate the fact that people wanted to ensure that it's important for there to be female characters and roles where they do go on a journey and they aren't just a function of the plot. And so that's something that is a really important conversation to continue.

Have you talked with Colin at all about how you will further or change that conversation in the next film?

Yeah. For instance, when I found out there was going to be a sequel and that I was going to be in it, the way that I found out was that Colin texted me "#NoHeels2018." [Laughs.] And I was like, "Yeah!" [My character] Claire knows to get in there now and her dynamic with the animals has certainly shifted and the woman you see at the end of Jurassic World is very different from the woman see you at the beginning.

That makes sense too because she had clearly never experienced anything like that.

No. Never at all. So yes, I think that's really cool. Colin, when he originally pitched the movie to me — I was the first actor he hired, months before anyone else had been hired — he said to me, "You are the lead of the movie." I was like, "Haha. Yeah, right. I'll believe it when I see it." He kept saying it, and then when I read the script, I thought, He actually did this. It's always been his intention from the get-go, to tell the story with a female character central to [it] and also she's a flawed character. I love that she's not some perfect angel who doesn't need to change and who always said the right thing.

She doesn't have to be in menswear and flats in order to outrun a T. rex. That's what women can do.

In talking more about those conversations about the character, did you think the comments were sexist? Feminist? What?

I felt that they were feminist, for sure. I think that in a way — and Mad Max: Fury Road is an incredible example of this — people are seeing that there is a kind of lower tolerance for vapid, meaningless, only functional female characters. We want the real world and the realities of the real world reflected in movies that we see, and audiences are not tolerating anything other than that. I think it's a good time to be a woman in this business and people are more outspoken. I have a lot of respect for the women that have been more outspoken and have had courage in that regard. The work that Geena Davis is doing in particular. Colin was very familiar with all of that when we were making the movie, and he made sure that in the background there was not just an even ratio of men and women, but actually, if you watch the scenes in the lab, you'll notice there are more female scientists then there are male scientists. In order to push up against what has been considered the status quo, we need to go even further.

Oh, and something to mention, the character of Claire in particular, who seems so ill-equipped to be able to thrive in the jungle, gets to the point at the end [where] she is the hero. It's Chris Pratt cowering with two children surrounded by stuffed animals, and my character who ends up saving the day. And that was something that Colin pitched to me before the script was even written. He was like, "In the end of the movie, she is the hero." And you know what? She's in high heels because she's a woman who has been in high heels her whole life and she can fucking sprint in them. She can. That's kind of how I perceived it. She doesn't have to be in menswear and flats in order to outrun a T. rex. That's what women can do.



Jurassic World is available on Blu-ray and DVD on Oct. 20.



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