Dakota Johnson Makes Racy Armie Hammer Joke on Sundance Opening Night
Dakota Johnson kicked off the 2023 Sundance Film Festival with gasps and laughs.
Johnson appeared at the inaugural “A Taste of Sundance” dinner Thursday night to present her friend and collaborator Luca Guadagnino with the International Icon award. While on stage, she applauded the Oscar-winning director’s 2017 independent film ‘Call Me By Your Name’, which premiered at Sundance, and joked that she had been offered the role of fishing in the coming of age story. (In one of the movie’s liveliest scenes, Timothée Chalamet’s character Elio performs a sex act on a piece of fruit, which Hammer’s character eventually discovers.) But she had to turn down the central role, she says. , due to scheduling conflicts.
“Thank goodness, though,” she said. “I would have been another woman that Armie Hammer would have tried to eat.”
A few years after the release of “Call Me By Your Name,” Hammer faced allegations of cannibalistic fetishes, as well as sexual assault and abusive behavior from extramarital partners. He denied all charges, and Hammer’s attorney maintained that all interactions “were completely consensual, discussed and agreed to in advance, and mutually engaged.”
Dakota Johnson jokes that she wasn’t cast in #CallMeByYourName: “Luca had asked me to play the role of fishing, but our schedules conflicted. Thank goodness because then I would have been another woman that Armie Hammer tried to eat pic.twitter.com/9RZqeu4SCN
— Variety (@Variety) January 20, 2023
“It’s been five years since this movie premiered here, and Luca hasn’t stopped taking us to exciting places,” Johnson said, nodding to Guadagnino’s latest film “Bones and All,” a romantic drama – also starring Chalamet – about two young lovers who also love human flesh.
“Who knew cannibalism was so popular?” she joked, evoking laughter from the crowd at Basin Recreation Fieldhouse in Park City.
Johnson, who starred in Guadagnino on 2015’s psychological drama “A Bigger Splash” and the 2018 remake of “Suspiria,” praised the filmmaker as a lover of film (and Prada) by presenting him with the award for international festival icon.
“In my mind, and I probably feel in your mind as well, Luca Guadagnino is the epitome of an international icon,” she said. “He wears Prada all the time.”