While you're busy enjoying all the ultra-s-xy scenes in Fifty Shades Freed, spare a thought for Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, who had a decidedly uns-xy time while filming those very scenes. In an interview this week with Marie Claire, Johnson gave a behind-the-scenes look at all the truly awful things she's had to go through while bringing your fave book club books to life.
To start with what might be the worst possible bit of movie magic you'll read about all week, Johnson shared that she had to have her modesty thongs glued to her body during s-x scenes. "I had these sort of strapless thongs that had glue on them. It's not glue, but it's sticky. They're, like, basically if it were a nipple pastie, but underwear. But it's only sticky at the top, it's not sticky the whole way. It would also come off because the adhesive would wear out, so then they would superglue it to my body so that it wouldn't fall off," she said. "I would wear two of them. It's not painful, I mean, it's barely anything. But I guess you have some sense of being covered. It's fucking bizarre."
No news on whether this prevented the classic hit "The Thong Song" from appearing in Fifty Shades Freed's soundtrack, but we can only assume that Sisqo's famous instructions — "Baby move your butt, butt, butt" — would be impossible for Dakota thanks to her wardrobe's obligatory glue leaving her stuck, stuck, stuck.
For his part, Dornan had to cover his junk with a "little pouch." In case you still might be thinking shooting s-x scenes sounds like a good time, let Johnson clear that up for you."It's super not glamorous; it's really -," Allure's February 2018 cover star said.
It's true: While Mr. Grey has an uncanny ability to turn on an entire movie theater's worth of people at once, Johnson said her experiences with Dornan in real life were much less fun. "[The s-x scenes] are never easy. It's not casual and it's not fun. It never got easy," she confessed. One scene, in particular, was especially tough to film. "The most difficult one by far — I think in all three movies — was a s-x scene in the third film where my arms and legs were handcuffed to a gate. It's like a fence thing that comes down. And I was blindfolded," she said. "It was kind of shocking because I didn't realize that no matter how prepared or rehearsed I was, when your senses are taken away like that you can't control the way your nervous system will react. So it was really tricky to navigate that scene. It was kind of difficult."
Johnson revealed that one (very understandable) way she and Dornan made it through those awkward scenes was by tossing back a shot or two beforehand. "Most of [our preparation] was just really figuring out exactly how we were going to accomplish the scene, so that there was not a lot of waiting around while we were both vulnerable. But if something was very, very difficult, it was sometimes necessary to have a shot of something strong beforehand," she said.
It also helped to work with advisors who walked them through the BDSM practices in each scene. "We just had people who specialized in knowing how things work, like how to use certain tools and toys. There's a certain method. It's very intricate and the details are really important. The rules are also really important," the 28-year-old said. "We didn't want to go make a movie about something we didn't research to the bone. So to really honor the BDSM community, we did it the right way."
