It’s totally normal to be nervous during your first time, and Jamie Dornan told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview for his new film Anthropoid that Fifty Shades of Grey may have suffered a bit as a result. Grey, of course, was the first movie adapted from a book trilogy beloved by readers everywhere seeking to be titillated by awkward sex writing — and while it performed well financially, the critical consensus was that the movie ended up, well, flaccid. Dornan says now that it’s because everyone was just a little tense from the weight of expectation, which is fine and nothing to be ashamed of. But fortunately for fans of his character Christian Grey, Dornan feels much more hopeful about the second and third movies, which he just finished shooting.
“The whole experience was actually quite different,†Dornan explained. “A lot of the pressure of the first movie was gone. Essentially I feel like all of that pressure when you’re making the first of a franchise of [movies based on] books that mean so much to people that has so much attention on it, it can be quite paralyzing, I think. I think a lot of that crept in the first time around and it maybe affects the work.†But even though Shades was pretty bad, it made more than half a billion dollars worldwide, which Dornan said helped everyone involved relax more for the sequels and “probably made it more enjoyable.†So the performance anxiety is behind team Fifty Shades, but let’s hope the next press tour is just as uncomfortable as the last one!