Exclusive: Jamie Dornan on the Ups & Downs of Fifty Shades Darker

Jamie Dornan on the ups & downs of Fifty Shades Darker

Location filming in France for the sequel Fifty Shades Darker was overshadowed on July 14 when a horrific terror attack on Nice during a Bastille Day celebration claimed the lives of 85 innocent people and injured hundreds of others. The tragedy led to security concerns for the cast and crew making the Universal Pictures film, and Jamie Dornan talked to us exclusively today at a press junket for Anthropoid and The 9th Life of Louis Drax about how he dealt with the harrowing event.

“It was, as you can imagine, a bloody awful situation,” Dornan told ComingSoon.net. “You’d be affected by it wherever you were in the world. Most of the cast and crew were actually staying in Monaco so there’s a little bit of distance there, but my family and I wanted a little bit more space so we were actually staying in Nice. The first thing that everyone has to work out was is everybody safe, is the whole crew and cast safe. Then you have the strange thing of the next day still trying to make this movie that’s costing millions of dollars to put together. There’s this contractual obligation to work the next day, which is a very strange environment to work in. It felt very frivolous and wrong to be making something as silly as a f**king movie the day after something like that happened.”

While Dornan seemed genuinely shaken by that experience, he was a bit more upbeat about how Fifty Shades Darker is progressing, despite the replacement of original director Sam Taylor-Johnson with James Foley and screenwriter Kelly Marcel with Niall Leonard.

“The general feeling on set has altered, definitely, because the energy of the director is at the top of the pyramid and that trickles down to the whole 200-strong crew,” Dornan said. “Some elements have shifted somewhat, but it’s still a lot of the same recurring crew and the actors are the same, much of it doesn’t really change. Regardless of changing the director or changing the screenwriter, I think when you’re two or three -or back-to-back- into a franchise everyone’s relaxed a little bit, everyone can enjoy it a bit more because the pressure’s slightly off, so I think there’s definitely an element of that.”

Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson are set to return as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele in both Fifty Shades Darker and the third film, Fifty Shades Freed. Expanding upon the events set in motion in Fifty Shades of Grey, the films will again aim to become the motion-picture events for Valentine’s Day 2017 and 2018. Michael De Luca and Dana Brunetti, alongside E L James, also return to produce.

Eric Johnson, Bella Heathcote, Luke Grimes, Eloise Mumford, Max Martini, Tyler Hoechlin, Rita Ora, Marcia Gay Harden, Robin Lee, Fay Masterson and Hugh Dancy also star in Fifty Shades Darker. James Foley is directing “Darker” and “Freed,” which are penned by E L James’ husband, Niall Leonard.

An erotically charged romance, the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise has capitalized on it’s naughty-but-not-too-naughty aesthetic to the tune of more than $570 million worldwide.

“Daunted by the singular tastes and dark secrets of the beautiful, tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a Seattle publishing house,” reads the official description for the Fifty Shades Darker novel. “But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, Anastasia cannot resist. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and Anastasia learns more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven and demanding Fifty Shades. While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Anastasia must confront the anger and envy of the women who came before her, and make the most important decision of her life.”

(Photo Credit: WENN.com)