Dakota Johnson is setting the record straight about her time on the set of the Fifty Shades of Grey movies which were adapted from E.L. James Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy of books. The first film debuted in 2015 followed by the second film Fifty Shades Darker in 2017, and Fifty Shades Freed in 2018. Johnson, plays Anastasia Steele alongside Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey.
The actress spoke with Vanity Fair and reflected on her time shooting the series and butting heads with James who commanded full creative control that squashed any ideas or input.
“She had a lot of creative control, all day, every day, and she just demanded that certain things happen,” the actress said of the author, who was also one of the film’s producers. “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.”
Things were hectic on set to the point where Johnson would sometimes have to rewrite scenes for herself. “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.”
She doesn’t have any regrets about the situation though, “I don’t think it’s a matter of regret. 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.”