Dakota Johnson may have played many roles on the big screen, but fans will always remember her for her breakthrough role in the Fifty Shades trilogy. She skyrocketed to fame after starring in Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) and its subsequent two sequels opposite Jamie Dornan. Years later, she is now “Fifty Shades Freed” from talking about her ‘psychotic’ association with the film.
Accounting her experience working on the film, Dakota revealed that she “signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making.” She added that she is a ‘sexual person’ and her instinct to know everything made her do the “big naked movies.” She had auditioned for the film by reading a monologue from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and thought that the film she was going to work on would be “really special.”
However, E.L. James, the studio, and the directors made it a chaotic experience for her. “Erika had a lot of creative control, all day, every day, and she just demanded that certain things happen,” the actress admitted. “There were parts of the books 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,” she further articulated.
Things started to change when Charlie Hunnam, who was set to star as Christian Grey, dropped out of the film due to a scheduling conflict. James got upset and scrapped the script. “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, “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. 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.”
Questioned if she regrets making the films, Dakota Johnson concluded by saying, “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.”
(Featured Image Credits: Focus Features)
