Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey, Black Mess, Suspiria) is “likely to direct” her first feature based on a script by an autistic actress, wants to continue telling female-centric stories through her TeaTime Pictures, avoid “toxic sets,” measure the sucess of movies in terms of viewer impact rather than box office, and would love to play a psychopath and an action role, the actress said on Sunday.
Asked by reporters during a press roundtable at the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) in the Czech Republic about whether she will move beyond acting and producing into directing, Johnson replied: “I think I will direct a feature, a very small one, hopefully soon. And it’s really close to my heart and very close to TeaTime. We’re making it with Vanessa Burghardt, who played my daughter in Cha Cha Real Smooth. She’s an incredible autistic actress.”
The star shared: “I’ve always felt that I’m not ready to direct a feature. I don’t have the confidence. But with her, I feel very protective, and I know her very well, and … I just won’t let anybody else do it.”
As a director, Johnson has already made the Coldplay music video “Cry Cry Cry” and the short film Loser Baby.
What attracts her interest when picking TeaTime projects? “Usually, it’s something that is either visually or emotionally provocative. And I don’t mean that in a sexual way. I mean it in [the sense] that it provokes something that is different than what you see on TV right now or on streaming platforms. A lot of them are also female characters. So it’s female-centric films where the woman is different from what you see, and complex and nuanced, and maybe an anti-hero that you love.” Projects could even feature a woman “who maybe does things that you would deem atrocious, but you are really on her side because she’s angry” and real, Johnson explained.
Producing has the benefit that she can surround herself with people who create a positive work experience. “I can’t waste time on toxic sets anymore,” Johnson said. “With producing, that’s one of the perks.”
She told reporters that she was “pretty vocal” when issues arose on set or beyond from a very young age. “Now, … being a producer and developing my own films, I can choose all the people.”
The star also called for new ways to measure the success of movies. “I think that the barometer for that is shifting right now. It’s hard to measure success based on box office numbers now, because it’s so all over the place,” she offered. Mentioning that Jurassic Park Rebirth has “slayed,” she said that, “the way I measure success is [in terms of] people who felt something or it meant something to them” – or people coming up to her in the street and telling her that they loved a film.
Johnson made time for meeting the press before receiving the KVIFF President’s Award on Saturday evening before a screening of her new film Materialists, which was directed by Celine Song and also stars Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans.
The second film that Johnson presented at KVIFF is the Michael Angelo Covino-directed romantic comedy Splitsville, which she also produced under her TeaTime Pictures banner, launched in 2019 with her producing partner Ro Donnelly.
Are there any roles she’d love to take on in the future? “There are roles that I dream of playing,” Johnson shared. “I would love to play a psychopath, would love to do an action film.”
Johnson made her film debut at age 10 in Antonio Banderas’ 1999 movie Crazy in Alabama. In 2010, she appeared in David Fincher’s The Social Network. Her recent credits have included the likes of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter (2021) and Carrie Cracknell’s Persuasion (2022). She next stars in Amazon’s Michael Showalter-directed romance thriller Verity opposite Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett.
“Dakota Johnson continues her family’s multigenerational acting tradition, as represented by her grandmother Tippy Hedren and both of her parents, award-winning Hollywood stars Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson,” festival organizers had highlighted when they unveiled that she would visit the picturesque Czech spa town to receive the honor.