It turns out that the drama on the Fifty Shades set was steamier than anything on-screen. Seven years after the franchise’s debut, Dakota Johnson spilled the tea in Vanity Fair, and it’s just as juicy as you’d expect. Behind the seductive facade, filming the Fifty Shades series was an uphill battle filled with creative clashes, awkward rewrites, and plenty of “What are we even doing?” moments.
Dakota initially signed on as Anastasia Steele because, as she put it, “I’m a s**ual person.” She wanted to explore the spicy themes that made E.L. James’s books a sensation. But reality hit hard. “I signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making,” she admitted. The reason? Creative control, lots of it. E.L. James (real name Erika) had her hands all over the project. “She demanded that certain things happen,” Johnson revealed, noting that parts of the book didn’t translate well to film.
Case in point: Anastasia’s inner monologue. “At times, it was incredibly cheesy. It wouldn’t work to say out loud.” It was a constant tug-of-war. “We’d do the takes Erika wanted and then the takes we wanted,” Johnson said. And the back-and-forth didn’t stop there. The original casting of Charlie Hunnam as Christian Grey fell through due to scheduling conflicts, forcing Jamie Dornan to step in. Cue more chaos. “There were a lot of different disagreements,” Johnson added.
