Dakota Johnson slams ‘bleak’ industry and ‘boring’ decisions ahead of ’Madame Web’ release

Jordan Hoffman
·3 min read
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Dakota Johnson has just a few more days of press before Sony’s “Madame Web” arrives in theaters, but until then she’s speaking her mind.

Speaking with French outlet L’Officiel, Johnson talked about how her independent two-hander “Daddio,” co-starring Sean Penn, took far too long to find a distributor after its Telluride debut last fall. (The film eventually landed a release deal with Sony Pictures Classics and is due out in theaters this year.)

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“People are just so afraid, and I’m like, ‘Why? What’s going to happen if you do something brave?’ It just feels like nobody knows what to do and everyone’s afraid. That’s what it feels like. Everyone who makes decisions is afraid. They want to do the safe thing and the safe thing is really boring,” she said, clearly with little love for decision-making executives in Hollywood. 

“It’s really f—ing bleak in this industry,” she continued. “The people who run streaming platforms don’t trust creative people or artists to know what’s going to work, and that is just going to make us implode,” she predicted. “It’s really heartbreaking. It’s just f—ing so hard. It’s so hard to get anything made. All of the stuff I’m interested in making is really different, and it’s unique and it’s very forward in whatever it is.”

When speaking with the ‘TODAY’ show, the topic of being a “nepo baby” came up. (The 34-year-old actress is, of course, the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, and granddaughter of Tippi Hedren.)  “When that first started I found it to be incredibly annoying and boring,” Johnson said. “If you’re a journalist, then write about something else. That’s just lame.”

Also, in a weird meta-twist, a clip about Dakota Johnson not understanding why something would go viral has gone viral this week. This may take a moment for those who don’t spend every moment of their lives online, so here goes.

“Madame Web,” much like Sony’s previous “Spider-Man”-adjacent superhero picture “Morbius,” has become a rich source of online memes, because, let’s face it, it doesn’t look particularly good. (Critics screenings are being held Monday afternoon in New York City, shortly before its wide release on Wednesday.) One line from the trailer—“He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders, right before she died”—has been hailed for its ridiculousness. 

Here you can see a HuffPo interviewer try to get Johnson on it, but she’s not interested in playing his game. ​

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