As revealed by Dakota Johnson, with the films based on the literary saga “Fifty Shades of Grey“, the author, E.L. James, had great creative control in the shooting, an essential condition for her to cede the rights to the story and prevent the films from moving away from the essence of her story.
Maintaining that balance between respecting the spirit of the original work and the goal of creating an effective film led to great tensions between the writer and the director of the first installment, Sam Taylor-Johnson, who refused to direct the other two parts that made up the trilogy.
Johnson, who gave life to the protagonist Anastasia Steele, admitted that the work days were a “constant struggle“:
“I signed up to do a very different version of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ (than) we ended up making. She (E.L. James) had a lot of creative control, all day, every day, and she just demanded that certain things happen“, she said.
“There were parts of the book that wouldn’t work in the movie, like the internal monologue, which was also incredibly pedantic at times. It was a constant struggle, chaos“, Johnson lamented in conversation with Vanity Fair magazine.
The hard experience that he lived in the filming of the first film, which was released in 2015, was not very different from what he had to endure with the recording of “Fifty Shades Darker” (2017) and “Fifty Shades Freed” (2018). .
However, her Dakota took advantage of her talk to deny one of the main rumors that emerged at that time, that she had a strong rivalry with her co-star Jamie Dornan, who played the millionaire Christian Grey.
“There was never a moment where we didn’t get along. I know it sounds weird, but he’s like a brother to me. I love him very, very much. And we were always there for each other. There was great trust between us, we protected each other“, the actress clarified.