The “Fifty Shades of Grey” saga launched actress Dakota Johnson to fame, but the result is far from what she had in mind. “I signed on to do a very different version of the movie that we ended up making,” Dakota Johnson assured in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine in which she spoke about the chaotic shooting.
“There were many different disagreements.” “I have never been able to talk about this honestly,” added the artist. She has now done it in a long interview. “It is clear that Dakota Johnson has weighed what she wants to say,” writes Britt Hennemuth, the journalist who signs it. “What follows next is a vent.” Dakota Johnson says that the filming of the film was “complicated”. It is not the only adjective that she throws, she also slips words like crazy and psychotic. “I was young, I was 23 years old,” she recounts nine years later, “so I was afraid.” She became crazy. When asked if the problem came from the studio, the directors, or a mixture of factors, the interpreter points to the last option with a laconic “It was a combo.” But she later points to a specific person: “It was also because of the author of the books.”
El James was an assistant director and had worked as a television executive. In the early 2000s, during her spare time, she wrote “Twilight” fan fiction, adding sex and removing vampires from the equation. That would be the embryo of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” a book that she launched in 2011 and whose series has sold more than 31 million copies worldwide. Her past in the world of television and film may have made the author very clear about how her novel had to be adapted.
“She had a lot of creative control,” Dakota Johnson explains of the writer. “All day, every day, she demanded that certain things happen.” The daughter of fellow actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson explains that some passages and resources made sense in a book but that it was absurd to transfer them to the film, “like the interior monologue, which was sometimes incredibly cheesy.” It wouldn’t work if it was said out loud. ” The film includes interior monologues from its leading lady, Anastasia Steele, played by Dakota Johnson.
It was always a battle. always, “she adds. Dakota Johnson achieved worldwide fame after the premiere of this film, which defined the public image of her protagonists for years to come. She has been shedding that image over the years through interviews and other film projects. The actress, who is co-creative director of the sex toy company Maude, tells Vanity Fair that the reason she made those “great nude movies” is because she considers herself a “sexual person.”
But things did not go as she thought. The film was criticized for being much more conservative than expected, and the chaotic shooting may have had something to do with it. Dakota Johnson landed a three-movie role as Anastasia Steele opposite Christian Gray, who was originally going to be played by Charlie Hunnam (“Sons of Anarchy”). Scriptwriter Patrick Marber, who had written films such as “Closer”, a sexual drama, was in charge of the script. But when Hunnam ended up dropping out of the project, citing scheduling conflicts, the writer was so enraged, Johnson says, that she scrapped her script.
Hunnam was replaced by Jamie Dornan. Ironically, the rumors about the filming at the time pointed to an alleged feud between the two leads, something that she denies in the interview. “There was never a time when we didn’t get along,” she says. “I love him so, so much. And we support each other. We had to trust each other and protect each other. ” The two actors teamed up with director Sam Taylor-Johnson to try to salvage part of the original script. But EL James had other plans. “We’d do the shots of the movie that Erika [the author’s given name] wanted to do, and then we’d do the shots we wanted to do ourselves,” Dakota Johnson laments. The night before, she would rewrite the scenes so she could add a line here and a line there. It was chaos all the time.
The only scene in Marber that got past the writer’s screen, says the actress, is the negotiation in which Anastasia and Christian outline their sexual contract. “And it’s the best scene in the whole movie,” she says. At one point, the journalist asks the actress if she regrets having participated in the saga. “Nope. I don’t think it’s a matter of regret. If only she had known… she cuts herself off. If I had known at the time that it was going to be like this, I don’t think anyone would have done it. It would have been like, “This is psychotic.” But no, I don’t regret it.
This is the first time Dakota Johnson has spoken openly about her experience with the movie that launched her to stardom, and while she can be quite candid, she says she hasn’t said all she could. “There are things that I can’t say yet because I don’t want to damage anyone’s career or reputation,” she adds as she strives to put a positive spin on the experience. “Erika is a very nice woman. She was always nice to me and I appreciated her wanting to be in those movies.” She assures us, “Look, she was great for our races.” “So amazing… Great luck. But it was weird. So, so weird. “