Dakota Johnson is getting very, very candid about the Fifty Shades Of Grey franchise.
In her cover feature for Vanity Fair’s July 2022 issue, the actress, who famously starred as Anastasia Steele on the massively successful film trilogy, spoke about the making of the movies. Dakota referred the the whole process and all that went down as “psychotic.”
She candidly stated:
“I’m a sexual person, and when I’m interested in something, I want to know so much about it. That’s why I did those big naked movies.
I signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making.”
The writer noted that they then asked Dakota who the problem was – whether it was the studio or the directors. To this, she frankly declared:
“Combo.
It was also the author of the books.”
The author of the books is E.L. James. Dakota said about her:
“She had a lot of creative control, all day, every day, and she just demanded that certain things happen.
There were parts of the book that just wouldn’t work in a movie, like the inner monologue, which was at times incredibly cheesy. It wouldn’t work to say out loud. It was always a battle. Always.
When I auditioned for that movie, I read a monologue from Persona and I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be really special.’”
When Dakota signed on, she was going to star opposite Charlie Hunnam and playwright Patrick Marber on the movie. Charlie departed the project eventually. Dakota recounted that James was so enraged when Charlie left that she scrapped the whole script. She went on to say:
“I was young. I was 23. So it was scary. It just became something crazy… There were a lot of different disagreements.
I haven’t been able to talk about this truthfully ever, because you want to promote a movie the right way, and I’m proud of what we made ultimately and everything turns out the way it’s supposed to, but it was tricky.”
She added that she, co-star Jamie Dornan (who took on the role of Christian Grey after Charlie left), and director Sam Taylor-Johnson “tried to salvage some of Marber’s script,” and said:
“We’d do the takes of the movie that Erika wanted to make, and then we would do the takes of the movie that we wanted to make. The night before, I would rewrite scenes with the old dialogue so I could add a line here and there. It was like mayhem all the time.”
There is one Marker scene that did make it into the movie – the negotiation scene where Christian and Ana outline their sexual contract:
“And it’s the best scene in the whole movie.”
So does she regret doing the films?
“No. I don’t think it’s a matter of regret. If I had known… If I had known at the time that’s what it was going to be like, I don’t think anyone would’ve done it. It would’ve been like, ‘Oh, this is psychotic.’
But no, I don’t regret it.
There are things that I still cannot say because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s career and I don’t want to damage anybody’s reputation, but both Jamie and I were treated really well. Erika is a very nice woman, and she was always kind to me and I am grateful she wanted me to be in those movies.”
