Archive 81's Mamoudou Athie is a biotech rep with a conscience in 'Jurassic World Dominion'

One of the new actors introduced into the Jurassic World mythology in the third and final movie in the trilogy, Dominion, is Mamoudou Athie who plays Ramsay Cole, the Head of Communications of Biosyn. It's essentially the next evolution of InGen, and it's run by CEO Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), who is actively tinkering with DNA to create scientific and commercial opportunities around the world. Cole, though, is the one who invites Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to the isolated Biosyn compound to speak to their campus of scientists. He also welcomes Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to join the fun, which incites some shenanigans. 

Despite being a newbie to the franchise, Athie — who fans might recognize from Netflix's canceled-too-soon Archive 81 — is in the enviable position of getting to play a lot his scenes with the legacy cast, including the ever-surprising Goldblum. Athie tells SYFY WIRE that he came away with even more respect for the thespian getting to work alongside him. 

"Jeff has an interesting mind. And he'll follow the thread," the actor chuckles about Goldblum's propensity to riff on lines and improv. "But, you know, the thing about Jeff is that he's an extraordinarily hard, hard, hard worker. He knew the script backwards and forwards. If you told me that he knew everybody's lines, I would believe you without a shadow of a doubt. He was always working on the script, just walking around the grounds and fine tuning things. I thought that was really impressive and that's something I really respect about him. I think he does that to have that freedom and to play when he gets on set. I won't speak for him, but that's just my conclusion."

Unlike the franchise's other morally dubious tech and science characters, Ramsay Cole is actually a biotech representative with a conscience — a label that Athie agrees with even if he admits to not having thought of the character in exactly those terms while filming.

He says that when director Colin Trevorrow cast him in the part, they had evolving conversations about Cole's motivations. "We had extensive talks about the character and some pretty extensive changes were made while we were shooting. But we both agreed that we wanted him to be ambitious and forward-thinking, but with a kind of enlightened self interest."

Cole is often the calm voice in the film amidst the dino chaos, and Athie says that was very purposeful.

"It was very important to me that he is kind of no nonsense, and very action focused on the task at hand at every moment," he explains. "There's that one scene at the end of the movie that he does something for himself that I really loved. But everything else is very focused on, "Okay, this to get to this, to get this, to get this." Yes, tech with a conscience. I like to think of him as an enlightened, self-interest oriented individual."

Jurassic World Dominion is now in theaters.