Dakota Johnson put a lot of trust in director SJ Clarkson while filming “Madame Web.” The actor, who stars as Cassandra Webb in the upcoming superhero thriller set in Sony’s “Spider-Man” universe, reflected on her experience working with a blue screen for CGI effects.
“I’ve never really done a movie where you are on a blue screen, and there’s fake explosions going off, and someone’s going, ‘Explosion!’ and you act like there’s an explosion,” Johnson said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “That to me was absolutely psychotic. I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be good at all! I hope that I did an OK job!’”
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“But I trusted [Clarkson],” Johnson continued, noting that she would often check in with the director to keep track of which scenes were real versus inside Cassandra’s head. “She works so hard, and she has not taken her eyes off this movie since we started.”
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Clarkson reached out to Johnson about the superhero film in 2021, shortly after the actor had finished filming “The Lost Daughter.” Johnson admitted she was hesitant at first about the role: “I got sent this script, and I was like, ‘I don’t know about me being a superhero.’”
But she was intrigued by Cassandra, saying, “I was sort of mystified by her powers. I felt like, ‘Oh, I really would love to see that superhero. I would love to see a young woman whose superpower is her mind.’”
Johnson also recalled the stunts she had to perform for “Madame Web,” particularly a “day of stunt driving work.”
“I’m really good at it, it seems!” Johnson said. “I mean, I can do some really wild things with a car. I drove an ambulance. I drove a taxicab. I drove everything in the movie — except for flying through the air and out of a building. But other than that, I’m like, ‘Watch out, Tom Cruise.’”
“Madame Web” premieres in theaters Feb. 14.