Jamie Dornan has opened up, in an interview with The Independent, about how director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s departure from the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise affected the film series.
Dornan starred as kinky business magnate Christian Grey in all three films in the trilogy from 2015 to 2018. The movies were all received disastrously by critics, at the same time turning Dornan into a global film star.
Taylor-Johnson was brought on to direct the first film, and she, Dornan and his co-star Dakota Johnson had a shared vision for the trilogy, but it clashed with that of the author behind the novels, EL James.
Taylor-Johnson once said that “every scene was fought over”, comparing her dynamic with James to “wading uphill through sticky tar”.
After the first film, Taylor-Johnson was replaced by director James Foley, and screenwriter Kelly Marcel was replaced by EL James’s husband Niall Leonard. They worked together on the subsequent two films, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.
