This February, Fifty Shades of Grey fans will return to theaters for more mild S&M thrills and an added dose of erotic thriller chills in the Fifty Shades Darker sequel — but star Jamie Dornan would like to remind you that he is not actually Christian Grey. In fact, he doesn’t even like the guy very much.
“[Christian Grey’s] not the sort of bloke I’d get along with,” the Irish actor told GQ Australia for their new cover story (quotes via E!). “All my mates are easy going and quick to laugh—I wouldn’t imagine myself sat in a pub with him. I don’t think he would be my type, when it comes to choosing mates.”
Dornan is probably right — a fastidious dude who only ever wears either crisply tailored suits or a pair of ripped “sex jeans” with no shirt, and has literally no friends outside of his adoptive family, might not be bro-down material.
When it comes to Christian’s penchant for whips, tethers and everything else in his Red Room of Pain, Dornan can’t relate to that either. But he did do some boots-on-the-ground research for the role, visiting an “S&M dungeon” (this means a private BDSM facility for paying participants, typically) beforehand.
“It was like nothing I’d experienced before,” Dornan told GQ Australia. “I’d never seen any form of S&M before this, I had no interest in that world.”
Though Dornan said “It doesn’t float my boat,” he clarified, “I’ve always been open-minded and liberal—I’d never judge anyone’s sexual preference. Whatever gets people off is entirely up to them and there’s a million different ways to please yourself, sexually.”
Those who enjoy BDSM in real life have had mixed but often negative views on its portrayal in both the film and the E.L. James book trilogy they’re based on, as this Guardian article explains.
For someone who finds tying women up uninviting, Dornan has sure had plenty of experience doing so onscreen: He’s absolutely terrifying as a serial killer who ties women up and chokes them to death in British-Irish crime drama The Fall, which you can watch on Netflix if you’d like to be permanently scared of Jamie Dornan forever. Christian Grey following Anastasia to her hardware store job to buy some rope and tape is romantic (I GUESS?), Dornan’s Paul Spector carrying rope and tape in his backpack to murder his lust object is something else altogether.
So yeah: Acting. Jamie’s pretty good at it!
Fifty Shades Darker hits theaters on February 10, 2016.
Read More: Jamie Dornan Says He Wouldn’t Like Christian Grey in Real
