Karen Gillan breaks her silence on that controversial 'Jumanji' costume

For anyone who grew up in the Nineties, the news that Hollywood has made a sequel to Jumanji is met with a certain concern. The original is, after all, a childhood classic, a magical fever dream where rhinos stampede through hallways and lions coil in beds.

It was for this reason that Karen Gillan – who stars in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle alongside Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black and Kevin Hart – was initially wary about signing onto the project. “I’m the biggest fan of Jumanji ever, it’s in my top three films of all time,” she gushes. “When I first heard they were making a sequel I was very protective over the original. Then I read the script, which was brilliant because it takes the story in a completely different direction and creates this new concept. I would never dare try and recreate the original Jumanji – it cannot be done!”

Jack Black, Nick Jonas, Karen Gillan, Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart in Jumanji: Welcome the the Jungle

Twenty-two years after the first film, which featured the late Robin Williams and a pre-teen Kirsten Dunst, the latest Jumanji has brought the narrative to the present, morphing the dust-coated board game into a more up-to-date video-game alternative. The movie follows four teenagers – trapped in the bodies of their on-screen alter egos – as they navigate through the depths of the rainforest on a mission to save Jumanji. Gillan plays one such avatar: Ruby Roundhouse, a martial-arts expert and dance-fighter extraordinaire who deconstructs what it means to be sexy with her book smarts and wavering insecurity. The actress enjoys this duality.

“It’s cool to see that," she says. "We have so many female characters in these types of films who are just badass and sexy, and it’s a bit of a stereotype now. We need more flawed, awkward, silly girls that fall over.”

Ruby Roundhouse’s online unveiling sparked a Twitter storm last year upon Jumanji’s poster release, which pictured Gillan in highly impractical short-shorts and a crop top beside her fully clothed male co-stars. What does she think of this outcry over her costume?

“To be honest, I do not see that whole uproar as a negative thing at all. I think that everybody had a fair point, which is that when you look at that picture out of context it’s absurd," she concedes. "But that is what we’re highlighting. It was a trope in Nineties video games to turn the female characters into ridiculous male fantasies. And they are scantily clad. To have people talk about it in that way is a really good conversation to be having and I’m glad it’s at the forefront of people’s discussions.”

Such a sideswipe at the patriarchy should be expected from the Scottish actress, mirroring, as it does, her delight that Jodie Whittaker broke the glass ceiling to become the first female Doctor Who on the programme that shot Gillan to fame in 2010. (“It’s outrageous in these times to hear someone say a woman can’t play a role. Of course she can!”)

Sony Pictures Classics

Despite being committed enough to shave her head to play an alien super-villain in Guardians of the Galaxy, Gillan found the preparations for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle to be the most challenging of her career to date. “It was so much rehearsal. I was training every single day: martial arts, basic punching and kicking, and then learning how to dance, which was totally foreign to me. But the worst part was the centipedes in the jungle. They would fall from trees at any given moment so you were never safe. It was horrible.” The role also required her to alter her diet. “I had to up my calorie intake,” she tells me. “It was never about losing weight, it was about gaining muscle and becoming stronger, which I think was really cool actually. I felt good.”

Although the physical demands of portraying an athletic man-slayer were way beyond her comfort zone, stepping into the shoes of someone gawky and unassertive allowed her to revisit more familiar territory. “The part wasn’t a huge stretch for me. I think I was cast because that is pretty much what I was like as a teenager,” Gillan admits, laughing. “Incredibly awkward, socially inept… I didn’t know what to do with my limbs and they’re so long it was like a giraffe trying to move around.”

Sony Pictures

Throughout our meeting, I’m struck by Gillan’s candour, by her palpable ease as she gracefully reclines into her chaise longue. This candidness filters down to her social-media accounts, whose glamour-puncturing captions act as a refreshing departure from the #IWokeUpLikeThis fabrications of most public figures. “I want it to be an honest representation of what I’m doing,” she says of her Instagram. “I hope it’s snippets into the reality of the life I’m living. I want it to be personal. There is something to having an untouchable mystique, and I like that in a movie star, but I’m just not like that.”

Mystery, she may not have, but Gillan has resilience in spades. If she were stuck in Jumanji, I wonder, what would her strengths and weaknesses be? “This really is going to turn into a therapy session now!” she says with a snigger. “Here we go. The thing that’s wrong about me is” – peals of laughter – “I can be rejected so many times and I’ll just keep going, and that’s why I’m an actress. You have to not be knocked by rejection, or fazed by it. I think that that is one of my greatest strengths in life, I can always bounce back from anything. However, my weakness would be all the beasties in the jungle.” Turns out shooting on location in Hawaii isn’t as idyllic as it sounds.

‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ is released nationwide on 20 December.

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