Up on Dakota Johnson's list: Directing her first feature, avoiding 'toxic sets'
"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," she told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. "We're making it with Vanessa Burghardt, who played my daughter in Cha Cha Real Smooth. She's an incredible autistic actress."
"I've always felt that I'm not ready to direct a feature. I don't have the confidence," she said. "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 directed the Coldplay music video Cry Cry Cry and the short film Loser Baby.
She wants to continue telling female-centric stories through her TeaTime Pictures and avoid "toxic sets".
When asked what attracted her to do TeaTime projects, she shared, "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 from 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," she told The Hollywood Reporter.
"I can't waste time on toxic sets anymore," Johnson said. "With producing, that's one of the perks," she added.
"Now, ... being a producer and developing my own films, I can choose all the people," she said.
She also shared that the parameter to measure the success of projects is changing, "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 said.
Johnson added, "It's really hard to make movies right now and to get people to believe in what you want to say. I don't think movies will save the world, by no means, but I do think it's nice to have them around."
Johnson made her film debut at the age of 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.
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