Dakota Johnson on the Secrets She’s Keeping for Sean Penn & Their New Movie Daddio

Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn are up close and personal in their new movie Daddio, artfully portraying one of the most oddly intimate things a person can experience — a long drive with an inquisitive cab driver.

The film, set almost entirely inside a cab driving from John F. Kennedy airport to midtown Manhattan, is a love letter to human connection that was brought together beautifully by Johnson and Penn whose real life friendship is the one of the reasons the movie came to life.

When Johnson talked to SheKnows, she opened up about approaching the Oscar winner to ask him to be part of Daddio.

“He’s my neighbor and I went to his house, and I was like, ‘Please, will you read this?'” she tells us. Penn nails the portrayal of a New York City cab driver, rough around the edges but soft on the inside. Johnson plays Girlie, a woman in her late 20s who isn’t a native New Yorker but has been weathered enough by living in the city to know when to be wary of strangers and when to embrace fleeting moments of connection.

“He did,” Johnson continues. “Then he asked if we could go for a walk, and we talked about it, and I convinced him to do it. He was a little bit wary at first, but he felt like, because it was a that this specific film was made by all women that he was safe.”

The Madame Web star serves as a producer on the project alongside her collaborator Ro Donnelly, under their TeaTime Pictures production company, and the film’s writer and director Christy Hall.

Penn and Johnson worked together in close quarters, separated only by sliding window separating a driver and customer. Clark (Penn) and Girlie probe intimate details of each other’s personal lives, keeping score of who divulges what. Clark quizzes Girlie on the man she is texting from the backseat, an older guy looking for sex. Girlie asks about Clark’s failed relationships and infidelities.

With that as the backdrop, it is hard not to assume that the Malibu neighbors now know each other in ways they never did before.

“I learned so much and I’ll never say,” Johnson says of Penn. “I know things that the Internet would love to know.” She adds: “I’m a vault.”

As a producer, the film feels particularly personal for Johnson who says getting it into theaters was no easy feat.

“It’s an amazing story and it’s incredibly written, the concept of making a film that was just set in a car with two people having one long conversation was a challenge that I felt really inspired by,” Johnson says.

“But it was difficult to get it financed to begin with, just because it’s so contained. People had a hard time wrapping their minds around how it would be entertaining. It took just certain people who really saw the humanity in it and the truth in it.”

When writer-director Hall talked to SheKnows, she praised Johnson for putting her faith behind the project both as an actor and a producer.

“She wears both hats beautifully, I have to say, like flawlessly, seamlessly,” Hall says. “From page to production to post, she’s a very activated producer.”

“This film really celebrates those two sides of her that are really beautiful. She has a lot to offer the world, I think, wearing both hats and wearing them well.”

Hall has been proudly celebrating the central message in Daddio: Be open to other people. “If you talk to someone long enough, they will mirror back at you your own humanity, and it reminds us that we’re not alone,” she says. “I think that’s a really important message to have right now.”

Daddio is in theaters June 28.

Before you go, click here to see movies directed by women you should watch right now.