Dakota Johnson told Vanity Fair that filming the “Fifty Shades” movies was “psychotic.”
“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,” Johnson admitted to Vanity Fair. “It would’ve been like, ‘Oh, this is psychotic.'” But Johnson said she doesn’t regret being part of the trilogy. “No. I don’t think it’s a matter of regret,” she said. “But no, I don’t regret it.”
Johnson, who was 23 at the time of the first movie in which she played Anastasia Steele, said she is a “sexual person” which is “why I did those big naked movies.”
She added: “I signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making.”
Johnson described a situation in which the directors, the studio, and the author of the books — E.L. James — were a “combo” of the problem.
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“She had a lot of creative control, all day, every day, and she just demanded that certain things happen,” Johnson said of James.
“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 continued.
Even so, she said James “is a very nice woman, and she was always kind to me and I am grateful she wanted me to be in those movies.”
She said when she auditioned, she thought the movie would be “really special,” but that wasn’t the case due to a rotating team.
Johnson recalled when the man originally cast to play Christian Grey, Charlie Hunnam, left the project due to scheduling conflicts, James was so upset she got rid of the entire original script.
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“It just became something crazy,” Johnson said.
“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 said.
“We’d do the takes of the movie that [James] wanted to make, and then we would do the takes of the movie that we wanted to make,” Johnson continued. “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.”
Johnson said she was able to salvage one scene from the original script — when Anastasia and Christian outline her sexual contract.
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“And it’s the best scene in the whole movie.”
Johnson also addressed rumors that she and Dornan did not get along during filming.
“There was never a time when we didn’t get along,” she said. “We were doing the weirdest things for years, and we needed to be a team.”
