Dakota Johnson has been juggling acting and producing since the creation of TeaTime Pictures, a joint venture with former Netflix exec Ro Donnelly, in 2019.
The actress revealed in an onstage conversation at the Red Sea Film Festival on Friday, that producing was a natural progression.
“I grew up in this industry. I grew up on set watching my parents work and watching how they would engage with filmmakers, producers and collaborators and I always wanted to be a larger part of the project.” Said Johnson, referring to her parents Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith.
“As I moved on in my career, I wanted to make my own projects and explore parts of myself and artistry that other people weren’t seeing… we’re drawn by female driven, human experience projects. I want to make movies about women and people who are going through some sort of evolution, internally and externally.”
The company has a clutch of announced projects in the works including sci-fi action pictures Trudy Blue and Johnson’s directorial debut A Tree Is Blue, written by and starring autistic actress Vanessa Burghardt, her co-star in TeaTime Pictures’ first production Cha Cha Real Smooth.
However, Johnson kept its activities under wraps in the talk and did not even give an update on her own film A Tree Is Blue.
Talking about her acting choices, Johnson said she had become savvier about the roles accepted.
“I’m learning more how to choose what’s right for me. I’ve definitely been persuaded to do some things in the past I realized in retrospect weren’t right for me, but that’s also part of the experience,” she said.
“Now I’m looking at… where is this person in me and how can I stretch myself. I want to evolve more and as an actress go to places I don’t think I was able to go, I want to expel things, there’s a lot I need to get out and I think I can find projects where I can that,” she said.
With seven years and seven completed productions under her belt as a producer, Johnson said she found producing harder than acting.
“I honestly think producing is more challenging. There’s something about acting where I feel, I’m in a bubble, and producing, you see behind the curtain and it’s really ugly… realizing that financiers are really shady sometimes is heartbreaking.”