Fifty shades of Gaeilge as Mescal’s cúpla focail ‘blows’ Dakota’s mind
HOLLYWOOD star Dakota Johnson admitted she fell for the Irish accent after working with two of our hottest actors.
Speaking as she gears up for her superhero debut in the new Marvel blockbuster Madame Web, Ms Johnson said she agreed with surveys that found the Irish brogue to be the sexiest, which may have helped during her infamously steamy scenes with Belfast’s Jamie Dornan in 50 Shades Of Grey.
And she said Paul Mescal – her co-star alongside Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter – ‘blew my mind’ when the Maynooth, Co. Kildare man broke out the cúpla focail.
Ms Johnson said: ‘I worked with Paul Mescal, and he’s a really good friend of mine. I saw him speaking Irish and that blew my mind.’
She didn’t get any lessons in Gaeilge from the Irish actor, but joked she hoped to ‘one day’.
Ms Johnson certainly made an impression on Mr Mescal when they were filming together. In a previous interview he admitted he was petrified before their kissing scene on his first day on set.
‘I was s***ting myself,’ he said at the time. ‘For some reason, the first scene that we had to do was me kissing [Ms Johnson]. I think I’d be okay with it if that happened to me now, but I think kissing anybody on your first day’s work, let alone your first f***ing job, let alone it being Dakota Johnson, you’re like: “Okay, great.”’
In the Sony/Marvel production, which hits Irish cinemas this week, Ms Johnson plays the part of Cassie Webb, a paramedic. She said the role required a ‘lot of training’ before the cameras rolled. Ms Johnson said: ‘I did a lot of training before we started filming, just to be strong and fit and able to do a lot of physical activity for days. And we had incredible stunt supervisors that were helping us with everything and teaching us how to do everything. I learned a lot.’
She also got up close and personal with another Irish star during the promotional tour for Madame Web. Chat show host Graham Norton was shocked to hear she had only one day’s training before hitting the set, as she showed him a video of her executing a difficult manoeuvre perfectly after only a few attempts. She told Mr Norton: ‘I did a day of stunt driving and it was the most fun ever. I grew up on a ranch in Colorado and when I was nine, I could drive anything.’
Ms Johnson also said she ‘never thought I would be a part of a superhero movie’ but the fact her character’s superpower ‘was her mind made me really interested in it’.