15 From Fifty Shades Of Grey Secrets We Bet You Didn’t Know

Well, that's some juicy stuff...

Damjan

• Published in Film & TV
• May 29, 2022

It goes without saying that the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise takes the cake when it comes to steamy on-screen sequences. The first film was released in 2015, and it was based on author E.L James's book series.

In Fifty Shades Darker, Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson resumed their roles as Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, respectively, in 2017, with Freed completing the trilogy in 2018. E.L. James, the author of Fifty Shades of Grey, is not a member of the literary elite.

She claims she began writing the books to help her deal with a mid-life crisis. If only we could all be that efficient... According to one online study, 44 percent of women said they preferred reading the Fifty Shades of Grey series to actually having sex.

Fifty Shades of Grey has been translated into 50 languages, and James was the best-selling novelist in the world in 2012. Fifty Shades Of Grey buyers and readers are a distinct demographic: they are mostly middle-aged women.

While the film leaves little to the imagination, even some of the most ardent fans of the film are unaware of a few elements! So, what lies behind the scenes of the Fifty Shades of Grey films?

Let's get started:

1. The Screenwriter

American Psycho writer Bret Easton Ellis tweeted in June 2012, "I'm putting myself out there to write the movie adaptation of 'Fifty Shades of Grey'..." He was publicly sharing his interest in adapting E.L. James' book for the big screen.

"I read the book out of curiosity. If it had not been as big of a hit, I would not have picked it up," Ellis later told Vanity Fair. "I realized, Oh, this isn't well written. It isn't a good book. But this is a really good story, and it would make a really good movie."

But Universal's Focus Features went with Kelly Marcel, who wrote the screenplay for Saving Mr. Banks—about Walt Disney's struggle to get Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers to let him make a movie about her magical nanny. 

The Wolverine writer Mark Bomback was brought in to fix the Fifty Shades script in late October 2013.

"I had never been on a project with that much secrecy around it," Bomback later told The Hollywood Reporter about the experience. "The set was on lockdown, and it was just really fascinating. I was able to watch something that everybody was speculating about sort of unfolding in front of me."

2. Angelina Jolie could've been Anastasia Steele

Angelina Jolie, who made her feature directorial debut with Land of Milk and Honey in 2011, was said to have had an informal chat about directing the film in June 2012, if the report was true at all.

Instead, Jolie chose to adapt Unbroken, the inspirational true story of Olympic athlete turned World War II pilot Louis Zamperini, who crashed, spent 47 days adrift in a life raft, and ultimately survived a POW camp.

Gus Van Sant, who, like Bret Easton Ellis, envisioned a more graphic, possibly NC-17 film, and Danish director Susanne Bier were the final two names on a shortlist that James and Focus Features had narrowed down—but producer Michael De Luca had previously worked with Sam Taylor-Johnson on a film before it fell apart, and suggested she attend a meeting about Fifty Shades.

When asked how she would deal with the book series' ardent fans, she replied that her most recent film, Nowhere Boy, was about the Beatles. She was hired.

3. Charlie Hunnam could've been Christian Grey

Although there were rumors about who would play Christian and Ana (Matt Bomer was flattered; Emma Watson was not; Taylor-Johnson wanted Robert Pattinson), Charlie Hunnam was serious about making the film once Sons of Anarchy concluded.

"There are so many fans of that book and I know that on the surface, I'm probably not what everybody imagined," the British actor told Entertainment Weekly in October 2013. "Because reading is so personal and people bring a character to life in their imagination, they feel ownership over that character."

He added, "That's daunting if I allowed myself to think about it too much. I'm taking it very seriously and intend to explore the nature of who this character is, what motivates him—and also dress up nice and look good in those suits." 

He left the production a few days later, citing a scheduling difficulty but also citing artistic differences with the film's creative team, which included Sam Taylor-Johnson, and second thoughts about whether it was the proper career move for him.

Hunnam claimed in 2017 that he had never viewed the film because the whole ordeal was too unpleasant. Hunnam was only paid $125,000 upfront for the part, according to The Hollywood Reporter at the time. Which appears to be... a bit cheap.

4. How Dakota Johnson was cast

Young actresses such as Shailene Woodley and Elizabeth Olsen, as well as Alicia Vikander and Felicity Jones, were rumored to be in the running for the role of Ana, but Dakota Johnson snatched it up.

"She's just so Anastasia Steele. She's the best partner a producer could have," Michael De Luca told E! News, calling Johnson "our rock." He said that the actress was "helping us look through the candidates [to play Christian] to see which chemistry kind of captures our attention."

5. Jamie Dornan

Jamie Dornan officially joined the cast two weeks after Charlie Hunnam left. The Belfast-born actor, who was best known at the time for ABC's Once Upon a Time, "had a really excellent read" at his audition, according to an E! News source, but there was no connection between him and his starring lady.

6. Start of Production

Principal photography was originally supposed to begin in November, but it was put back a month. On December 2, 2013, the cameras began rolling, with Vancouver, British Columbia, standing in for Seattle.

7. Changes in the release date

"The release date is preserved and we're gonna kind of keep going," De Luca said days before the film's release date was changed from Aug. 1, 2014, to Feb. 13, 2015.

8. Baby

When Dornan was cast as Christian, his wife, Amelia Warner, was around 8 months pregnant with their first child, but she packed up and moved to Vancouver, where daughter Dulcie was born on Nov. 21, 2013.

"Then Jamie had a brand-new baby the first week of shooting," Taylor-Johnson recalled to Vanity Fair.

9. Sex Scenes

Taylor-Johnson sought to keep the crew in the room as small as possible for the sex scenes to make Johnson and Dornan as comfortable as possible.

"I didn't want [Dakota or Jamie] to have to come re-shoot those kinds of scenes," the director told Vanity Fair.

"It was a closed set, and so we couldn't be there for those very intimate scenes...but so much of the movie turns on those intimate scenes," producer De Luca explained.

"We'd be in our trailers, but [the actors] were miked, and we had cans—you know, headphones—but I actually got shy from listening. There was something about not being there and having the audio that made us feel like peeping listeners, and so we all put them down."

James was rumored to want as many sequences as possible to play out exactly as she'd planned them, while Taylor-Johnson was more concerned on "details, flesh and fingers and skin and eyes and looks."

She felt if they showed too much "the mystery would be gone. You see a lot, but you don't have to see anything graphic."

10. "Crazy in Love"

The first trailer was certain to go viral, but having a slowed-down version of Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" set the tone didn't hurt.

"Obviously I know how ‘Crazy in Love' goes, but I knew there was the possibility her vocals would be different," violinist and recording artist Margot told TIME.

"It's almost more vulnerable and beautiful this way, because you do do crazy things when you fall in love. To hear the mood reversed and flipped makes it even more powerful."

11. "Love Me Like You Do"

Ellie Goulding's "Love Me Like You Do" was written exclusively for the soundtrack and received two Grammy nominations and a Golden Globe nomination—but the Oscar nomination went to The Weeknd's "Earned It" (which lost to Sam Smith's "Writing's on the Wall" from Spectre).

12. Rumors about feuds

Who wants a fantasy when there are rumors of a feud? Because Dornan was (and still is) married, there was no chance of a real-life romance a la Robsten, so the next best thing was to conjecture that he and Johnson didn't get along.

A few awkward-looking joint interviews didn't help matters, but how comfortable would you be talking about nudity and sex scenes on camera?

"Look, people are going to say that because it's a story and people like to create a little bit of hype leading up to the film," Dornan told E! News at Fifty Shades of Grey's London premiere. 

"It's an obvious story to come up with, you know if I was into the world of coming up with fake stories I'd maybe start to do that on a blog." He quickly added, "No, I would never become that person, but I understand it. It creates a bit of…whatever."

13. Reviews

The film received mixed reviews, ranging from mediocre to scathing to amusing (though not in the same spirit as Cats), but it was a box office success, grossing $570 million worldwide on a reported $40 million budget.

James Foley directed both sequels, which grossed $381 million and $372 million respectively.

14. Box Office

It held the record for the highest opening weekend for a female filmmaker in the United States until Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman opened with $103 million in 2017.

15. Director leaves

Taylor-Johnson didn't return to the franchise, owing to her conflicts with James, who maintained as much creative control as she could, even hiring her husband, Niall Leonard, to write the scripts for the sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.

"We would have proper on-set barneys," Taylor-Johnson recalled. "I'm not confrontational, but it was about finding a way between the two of us, satisfying her vision of what she'd written as well as my need to visualize this person on screen."

She also told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015 that James "would be the first to say as well that it was not easy. It was not easy. But we got there. I think both of us felt it was an incredibly painful process."

James said in an appearance on MSNBC that "people are going to butt heads, and that is exactly what happened."

Well, what do you think about these behind-the-scene facts? Here is another interesting fact for you:

The Fifty Shades of Grey series is set in Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon - places James has never been to! She claims that she uses Google Street View to get a sense of how the city looks on the ground.

Damjan