A decade after making Fifty Shades of Grey, Sam Taylor-Johnson's perspective remains anything but.
The director addressed how difficult the experience was in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, telling the magazine, "The success of it was great, but the experience of it was tough."
From Taylor-Johnson's perspective, the challenges that emerged stemmed from her conflicting point of view with E. L. James, the author of the blockbuster book series the film trilogy is based on.
"This was her book and she had a very particular vision of how she wanted to see this film," Taylor-Johnson explains. "And I had a diametrically opposed vision. Where we got to is where we got to."
Taylor-Johnson went on to direct episodes of the series Gypsy, as well as A Million Little Pieces -- based on James Frey's 2003 book -- and the upcoming Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black. However, after her Fifty Shades experience, continuing to direct did not come easy. "It took me about four years to regain my confidence and composure," she tells THR. "I'm going back to being an artist where I can make all my own decisions, answer to myself and present the world with something that I’ve created."
Sam Taylor-Johnson poses with E.L. James and the stars of Fifty Shades of Grey.
This is not the first time she's shared such sentiments. During an interview with THR back in 2017, Taylor-Johnson referenced the "touch" experience, once again citing her and James' "polar opposite" creative visions.
"Every scene was fought over. It was tough. It was like wading uphill through sticky tar," she described back then. "Her thing was, 'This is what the fans expect.' I'd be like, 'Well, let’s try and hit those marks but create a new universe at the same time.'"
While James Foley took over as director for the two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, Taylor-Johnson told THR back then that she struggled to get job offers despite Fifty Shades of Grey earning more than $500 million at the box office.
"There weren’t any flat-out [job] offers straight away," she revealed. "It was ego-denting, which may not have been a bad thing. At the same time, I was like, 'Oh, I still have to keep fighting for stuff.' I just thought it was going to come a lot easier."
Dakota Johnson starred as female protagonist Anastasia Steele in all three films of the franchise.
Dakota Johnson, the leading star of the franchise as Anastasia Steele, echoed some of Taylor-Johnson's pain points years later in a headline-making 2022 interview with Vanity Fair.
Of James, Johnson told the magazine, "She had a lot of creative control, all day, every day, and she just demanded that certain things happen... There were parts of the books that just wouldn’t work in a movie, like the inner monologue, which was at times incredibly cheesy. It wouldn’t work to say out loud. It was always a battle. Always."
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