Dakota Johnson doesn’t have to do much to get in the mood for a sex scene, she revealed Tuesday, joking she’s “always psyched up for sex.”
The Fifty Shades of Grey star was asked how she prepares herself for those scenes on the latest episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast. To the Saturday Night Live alum’s surprise, Johnson said, “Amy, I don’t have to.”
“You’re like, 7:30 a.m., ‘Let’s do it’?” Poehler asked, “That’s a lot.”
Johnson, 35, insisted that yes, she just says, “Let’s go to pound town.”
Johnson is best known for her breakout roles in the racy but critically-panned Fifty Shades movies, and Poehler was clearly expecting a different answer from the star.
She explained her lax attitude like this: “I think it depends on who is the character and who’s the character supposed to be to the audience. Is she like a super idolized hot girl? Is she like a housewife? Is she lonely? Is she scared? Is she conservative? That’s obviously character work, so certain prep would go into it.” She added, “It’s a sex scene, it’s not sexy.”
“There are times when I’ve done a sex scene where I’m by myself because only I’m in the frame. So I’m just, like, gyrating on my own,” she said, “Or like slamming myself into a headboard.”
Poehler joked, “And then on the other side of the camera is just a bunch of crew guys,” as Johnson added, “with their heads down.”
“It’s something that I feel brave with… when it’s used the right way in a story,” Johnson said, explaining that she’s just naturally comfortable in her own skin. She credits her mother, actress Melanie Griffith, for “raising me to be really, really proud of my body and love my body. So I’ve always felt so grateful for that, especially in my work, because I can use it and it feels real.” Johnson’s father is veteran actor Don Johnson.
As for whether or not her films themselves work on the whole, Johnson told Poehler she’s “not going to f---ing cry” about that. Days after she declared the flop of her Marvel film Madame Web “was not my fault” and pointed the finger at executives who “who don’t have a creative bone in their body,” she had similar comments to Poehler about Fifty Shades of Grey.
“The movie is as good a version of it as it could be,” she said. “I signed on to a script that was different than what we ended up shooting—written by a different person. Then you’re attached. You signed a contract, so you’re signed on to do it… with a different actor. It was like a different thing and then it all changed and I was just in it.”
Even though Johnson has an easy attitude about filming sex scenes, she admitted she had to be “brave” to do the film at the time. “I just feel proud of myself,” she said. “There were no intimacy coordinators then.”
