During an appearance on BBC Sounds’ Desert Island Discs podcast, Jamie Dornan disclosed what he felt about all the negative feedback the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise received back in the day.
While Dornan has cemented himself as one of this generation’s most prolific actors, The Tourist star still couldn’t hide from his past. For some actors, there are projects they are either ashamed of or regretful about, like Robert Pattinson in The Twilight Saga and Jacob Elordi in the Kissing Booth trilogy. For Dornan — though he opened up in the past that he didn’t regret starring in the movie — it was the Fifty Shades trilogy. The actor played the domineering Christian Grey opposite Dakota Johnson’s Anastasia Steele.
“I think I hid. You know, I’m coming off the back of career-altering reviews for The Fall and BAFTA nominations, and all this sort of madness The Fall brought to just ridicule, almost. Actually, we went down to Sam Taylor-Johnson and I and her husband to their place, and they weren’t there. And they sort of let us have their place in the country. And we sort of hid there for a while. And just shut ourselves from the world a bit. And then sort of came out the other side,” said Dornan.
He continued, “It made so much money that two or three were like greenlit overnight. So, it was like a strange thing, because then you are like, there is a bit of ridicule here, and I’m now contractually doing two more of them and knowing that there would be more of that damnation to come.”
When Fifty Shades of Grey debuted back in 2015, the film immediately garnered massive earnings, so much so that it went on to spawn two sequels, including Fifty Shades Darker in 2017 and Fifty Shades Freed in 2018. However, despite its impressive box office haul, the film series received plenty of negative reviews, with only a 25% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. The two succeeding sequels, on the other hand, both acquired a disappointing 11% critic score as of this writing. Fortunately, and deservedly so, the model-turned-actor went on to star in several highly regarded projects, such as The Tourist and Belfast.
“You know, I have just had very glowing reviews for recent work and there wouldn’t be many of them that don’t mention Fifty Shades in them. You know, a lot of reviews are like, ‘He’s great, but lest we forget when he wasn’t great here.’ But regrets that I did them, no,” Dornan added.
What is Fifty Shades about?
The trilogy centered on the complicated relationship between young woman Anastasia Steele and businessman Christian Grey. The synopsis reads: “When college senior Anastasia Steele steps in for her sick roommate to interview prominent businessman Christian Grey for their campus paper, little does she realize the path her life will take. Christian, as enigmatic as he is rich and powerful, finds himself strangely drawn to Ana, and she to him. Though sexually inexperienced, Ana plunges headlong into an affair — and learns that Christian’s true sexual proclivities push the boundaries of pain and pleasure.”
