Jonathan Bailey covers the June-July cover of British GQ, partly to promote Jurassic World Rebirth and partly to hype Wicked: For Good, which comes out much later this year. I can’t believe British GQ put this good-looking man in a TRACKSUIT for the cover. It’s hilarious – this cover looks so ‘80s to me. Anyway, Jonathan is always so charming, sweet and earnest. He’s beloved by directors and costars, and he’s committed to just working as hard as possible in everything he does. And he does it all – movies, TV, theater. He’s having a blast. Some highlights from GQ:

Working with dinosaurs: Nothing could take Bailey out of the wonder of that experience. Not the fact that the grass had been painstakingly grown to the right height for this particular scene. Not even the fact the leg was actually a giant blue tube containing a crew member, who was huffing and puffing to keep up with him. “I had to go over and touch the Titanosaur and I can just hear heugh heugh heugh,” Bailey says now, mimicking a timid panting noise. “And still! The magic of Jurassic! The will of the crew! It was a really emotional moment.”

He was in awe on the set of ‘Wicked’: On the many sets of Wicked, a field of nine million tulips planted in Norfolk to create a technicolour field of flowers. “Being slightly off the M1 in Munchkinland, with Ari [that’s Ariana Grande to you and I] singing a beautiful mezzo soprano, and then seeing cars pulling up on the hard shoulder trying to record it. And then seeing men in the sky, [which] turned out to be microlights and drones. It was like Independence Day.”

The Wicked press tour was unhinged: “You can’t really gauge the scale of it, even when people say it’s big,” he says. He came home and told his friends things that had happened, and, “Yeah,” they would say, cutting him off, “we already saw that.” His big takeaway from the press tour was: thank the Lord for Jeff Goldblum, who kept him laughing and also told him he’d have a great time in the Jurassic Park universe. “We’ll see how it goes, but there might be a few films down the line where me and him can appear in Jurassic together. Dr Ian Malcolm and Dr Henry Loomis on a night out.”

He’s ripped in Jurassic World: “Scarlett and Mahershala were like, ‘You have to go to the gym so you can sustain it and get through the day.’ You’re constantly running with the energy that you’re about to be chomped by a T-Rex.” But, really, a jacked paleontologist? “You’ll find out. There’s something about his character he talks about. He goes to the gym and it’s a moment in the story!”

Levity in dark times: “It’s easy to look back at something as brutal and terrifying and desperately angering as the AIDS crisis and think that nobody had fun. It’s bullsh-t. People find more joy in desperation and terror, and so the lightness of touch was meaningful.”

He knew he was gay at a young age: “I really remember knowing everything about myself at a young age. I remember at primary school being really clear and then it sort of gets murky as you get older, which is such a shame, especially when it’s to do with sexuality.”

[From British GQ]

The piece is interspersed with his costars and directors raving about him. I feel like he’s not only getting jobs because he’s a wonderful actor, but because he’s a “personality hire,” someone who brings lightness and good vibes wherever he goes. He seems like such a sweetheart, and I love how many of the Jurassic actors totally geek out about how they get to “work with dinosaurs.” Jurassic Park really was a huge cultural moment for so many Millenials, Xennials and young Gen Xers. Every film buff’s wild fun fact is that Steven Spielberg made Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List back-to-back – JP was still in post-production when Spielberg was starting principal photography on SL.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of British GQ.