Dakota Johnson Shares Honest Insights on the Challenges of Producing at Red Sea

Dakota Johnson has been balancing her roles as an actress and producer since the founding of TeaTime Pictures, a partnership with former Netflix executive Ro Donnelly in 2019.

In a recent appearance at the Red Sea Film Festival, Johnson discussed how producing felt like a natural evolution in her career.

“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,” Johnson said, referencing her parents, Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith.

As her career progressed, Johnson expressed a desire to create her own projects and delve into aspects of her artistry that she felt were overlooked. “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,” she added.

TeaTime Pictures has several projects in development, including the sci-fi action film Trudy Blue and Johnson’s directorial debut, A Tree Is Blue, which stars Vanessa Burghardt, an autistic actress and her co-star from the company’s first production, Cha Cha Real Smooth.

However, during the talk, Johnson refrained from providing updates on her own film, A Tree Is Blue.

On the subject of her acting choices, Johnson noted that she has become more discerning in selecting roles.

“I’m learning more how to choose what’s right for me. I’ve definitely been persuaded to do some things in the past that I realized, in retrospect, weren’t right for me, but that’s also part of the experience,” she remarked.

Johnson elaborated on her desire for growth as an actress: “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 do that.”

With seven years of experience and seven completed productions as a producer, Johnson stated that she finds producing to be more challenging 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,” she said.