The one role Dakota Johnson will always regret: “The worst time of my life”
They say it’s not what happens to you that’s important but how you react to it, and Dakota Johnson certainly had some reacting to do in the aftermath of Madame Web, the Marvel movie that was so universally hated that it went down as one of the poorest major films in recent memory and swept up Golden Raspberry awards by the fistful.
It was such an enormous flop that it had the potential to do serious lasting damage to Johnson’s career which had started to take off and had survived the panning that the last couple of films in the hurty-sex drama Fifty Shades of Grey series got, something of an achievement in itself.
Obviously, Johnson doesn’t have the same kind of worries most of us do, given she’s the daughter of Miami Vice star Don Johnson and actor Melanie Griffiths, but presumably, had things gone properly south, it would have upset her for a couple of days at least.
In fact, she spoke about one of her previous roles affecting her in just that kind of negative way, more specifically when she popped up in the last series of The Office US back in 2013, playing a young accountant hired by Dwight Schrute, and for a while there were even ideas of her leading a spin-off. Johnson was a big fan of the Steve Carell-starring hit and was particularly excited to get a call from the producers, but sadly things didn’t quite pan out the way she had hoped.
She told chat show host Seth Myers: “That was honestly the worst time of my life. I loved that show [The Office] so much. And they were like, ‘Do you want to be in the series finale?’ I was like, ‘Of course,’ thinking that I’d show up for like half a day. I was there for two weeks, and I’m barely in the f***ing show.”
It didn’t seem to worry her too unduly, however, as she landed the lead in Fifty Shades barely a year later, again earning some Golden Raspberry noms, and popped up alongside Johnny Depp in the mob movie Black Mass in 2015.
Where things began to change a bit for Johnson was when she took on the main role in the 2018 remake of the 1977 Dario Argento spookfest Suspiria, which was directed by Call me by Your Name’s Luca Guadagnino and had a soundtrack penned by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke. Johnson’s performance in the horror was critically acclaimed and sparked her taking on a string of interesting roles, including in the excellent 2019 comedy The Peanut Butter Falcon and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter.
Then came the absolute cinematic disaster that was Madame Web in 2024, about which she said: “…you can’t do anything about it. Like, what am I going to do, fucking cry about Madame Web? No. I’m gonna laugh.”
Which is fair enough and the right way to go about a load of resolutely single men on the internet getting upset about pretend superheroes in a film. Coming up, Johnson has a supporting role in a creepy thriller with Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett called Verity, plus she’ll be directing her own film, A Tree is Blue which stars Jessica Alba and Charli XCX.
