'I had proper on-set barneys with Fifty Shades author EL James,' says film's director
Film director Sam Taylor-Johnson has revealed she clashed with author EL James as she battled to bring the bestselling novel Fifty Shades of Grey to the big screen.
The writer was on set every day as Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson brought her fictional creations, the sexually adventurous businessman Christian Grey and college student Anastasia Steel, to life in the most hotly-anticipated movie of the year. Speaking to PORTER magazine, Taylor-Johnson, 47, said the process was “difficult” although the fights were “creative” and they resolved them.
She said: “We would have proper on-set barneys and I’m not confrontational, but it was about finding a way between the two of us, satisfying her vision of what she’d written as well as my need to visualise this person on screen, but, you know, we got there… She will be the first to say she found it very difficult to give up control.”
Taylor-Johnson hired a dominant and dominatrix as advisers for the film which is ”like a dark, twisted fairy tale”.
“It’s a Hollywood movie but it’s going to be extreme for that world. It’s going to be pretty sexually explicit.”
She said she did not expect to get the job. She had directed one film, Nowhere Boy, through which she met her second husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 24, and only read the book just before meeting Universal Studios executives.
She beat rivals including Angelina Jolie who sent her an “incredibly sweet” good luck email afterwards and is now a friend.
But Taylor-Johnson, who has twice beaten cancer, said: “When I decide I want something, I go in like an Exocet missile. I just knew I wanted to make this film, I knew how it should be made, needed to be made, and I felt a certain responsibility to make it the right way.”
The film is in cinemas February 13.
To see the full interview with Sam Taylor Johnson buy the latest issue of PORTER, on sale globally on Friday February 6. Also available as a digital edition, or go to portersubscription.net-a-porter.com
