‘Fifty Shades’ star Dakota Johnson talks horrible filming experience with E.L James

The actress in a cover story for Vanity Fair detailed how ‘the author of the books” ( E.L. James) insisted on exercising full creative control on the adaptation and how her choices affected the outcome of the franchise.

“I signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making,” Johnson said. “[E.L. James] had a lot of creative control, all day, every day, and she just demanded that certain things happen. 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. When I auditioned for that movie, I read a monologue from ‘Persona’ and I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be really special.’”

The actress who became a household name from the franchise further shared that things became “something crazy”, adding that 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.”

“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.

“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.”

Despite the ‘crazy’ experience, Johnson added that she had no regrets and held nothing against James.

The ‘Fifty Shades’ trilogy premiered in cinemas in 2015, 2017 and 2018 respectively and collectively grossed a total of $1.325 billion in box office.