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Dakota Johnson, queen of all nepo babies, is incapable of being boring. No matter what she’s stuck promoting, Johnson brings such a specific and chaotic energy to press appearances that the world reshapes around her. Like her character in Suspiria, she brings destruction in her wake. But like her character in the series finale of The Office, she’s also literally just a girl. Someone doing her job under insane media scrutiny during one of the more upheaval-y eras of the entertainment biz. We’ve gathered all Dakota Johnson’s media moments, controversies, and Ellen takedowns into one kooky timeline. And she’s keeping it up through the Cannes push for Materialists. Her web? Oh you know it connects them all.
Early Life
Dakota Johnson is the daughter of Melanie Griffith, who is herself the daughter of Tippi Hedren. Johnson has spoken about how growing up in the Hedren/Griffith household impacted her view of fame and the industry, particularly with regards to her grandma and Alfred Hitchcock. “She’s always been really honest and firm about standing up for yourself. That’s what she did,” Johnson said on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast. “Hitchcock ruined her career because she didn’t want to sleep with him, and he terrorized her. He was never held accountable.” In a Vanity Fair profile, Johnson said that when Griffith was a little girl, the director sent her a coffin with a doll of Hedren inside. “It’s alarming and dark and really, really sad for that little girl,” Johnson said. “Really scary.” And that’s not even getting into the Roar/growing up on a big-cat sanctuary of it all. TikToker Davis K. Bates sums it up perfectly.
Vulture’s Rebecca Alter covered this story in tremendous detail back when it broke in 2022. To TL;DR, Dakota Johnson may or may not have used a piece of rope to tie the door shut to a Blue Bottle Coffee, because the baristas may or may not have told her she couldn’t pull shots, which may or may not have been part of a Vogue digital-exclusive video.
2016: Censored by CBS
According to Stephen Colbert, he and Johnson took so many shots what shooting a Late Show interview that CBS made them edit a few out. “We did so many shots that the network said “You have to take some of those shots out,” Colbert told Busy Philipps on her QVC+ talk show. “You can’t get hammered on national television.” Okay, why censor her art, CBS? Colbert joked that after finishing the interview, he straight up left the Ed Sullivan theater. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, figure out how to say goodnight.’”
2019: “Actually, no, that’s not the truth, Ellen”
Johnson helped topple a daytime TV empire when she informed Ellen DeGeneres that, actually, no, she did invite Ellen to her birthday. DeGeneres’s career basically ended shortly thereafter, after it came to light that her show was allegedly a hotbed of workplace toxicity. But Johnson’s light rebuke was the first volley.
2020: Limegate
Lemme take you back. It’s 2020, middle of lockdown, and access to The Celebs is deeply curtailed by the total shutdown of public life. Architectural Digest’s home tours start to take on an increased importance, as it’s one of the few avenues famouses have left to address the masses (and that the masses have for criticizing the celebs). Dakota Johnson’s tour goes viral in part because she gives a special shout-out to a bowl of limes in her kitchen. “I love limes. I love them. They’re great. I like them so much, and I like to present them like this in my house,” she said. Fast-forward to January 2021, and Dakota Johnson tells Jimmy Fallon that not only does she dislike limes, she’s allergic! If we can’t trust the great truth-teller/Ellen-slayer about her love of limes, who can we trust?
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2023: Madame Wha’ Happen?
And now we come to what may be the culmination of Johnson’s media training: the press tour for Madame Web. The film is rapidly gaining cult status amongst the sillier geese of Film Twitter. If Morbius mothered, you’d get Madame Web. The fun started with a line in the trailer said by Johnson, “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died,” which is never actually delivered in the movie. Then there was an earthquake during the junket, it seemed like Johnson thought she was in an MCU movie and not a Sony Spider-Man jawn, she went on The Tonight Show and said she cried every time she saw Fallon because he’s so funny, and on and on and on. It seems unlikely that we’ll ever get the Madame Web sequel that explains how Sydney Sweeney et al. got their superpowers, but if we do? I am sat, front row, 2003-appropriate sunglasses the fuck on.
After Madame Web underperformed at the box office, Dakota Johnson reflected on the press tour. She told Bustle “It’s hard for me to fake it. It’s hard for me sometimes to go along with the silliness of doing a press tour.” Which is probably why, earlier in the interview, she called out the elephant in the room. Predicting the headlines that will inevitably follow, Johnson guessed “Like, ‘Dakota Johnson Breaks Her Silence On Madame Web’s F*cking Box Office Failure.’ […] It’s like, ‘No, I’m not breaking any silence. I’m just talking.’”
October 2024: Oh no Daddio
This one isn’t really Dakota’s fault, per se. But of course the R-rated movie that played on every screen of a Quantas flight was a Johnson joint. Per CNN, passengers were unable to turn off Daddio for the majority of a flight from Sydney to Tokyo. According to someone on Reddit, the film featured “a lot of sexting – the kind where you could literally read the texts on screen without needing headphones.” It took almost an hour before the screens turned to something “more kid-friendly.” Quantas has apologized to all passengers. “The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight,” a spokesperson said. “All screens were changed to a family friendly movie for the rest of the flight, which is our standard practice for the rare cases where individual movie selection isn’t possible. We are reviewing how the movie was selected.”
May 2025: Money Talk for Materialists
Dakota Johnson has been talking fiscal solvency during the press tour for Materialists. In Elle UK, she said her dad cut her off after high school because she didn’t get into Julliard. “I didn’t get in and my dad cut me off because I didn’t go to college. So, I started auditioning. I think I was 19 when I did The Social Network, and then little jobs and stuff after that,” she said. She then explained that, although her dad technically cut her off, she could still ask for money in emergencies. “For a couple of years it was hard to make money. There were a few times when I’d go to the market and not have money in my bank account or not be able to pay rent, and I’d have to ask my parents for help,” she said. “I’m very grateful that I had parents that could help me and did help me. But it certainly was not fun.” So she really could call her dad and he’d stop it all?
In a different part of the Elle interview, Johnson said her co-star Pedro Pascal should do foot stuff on OnlyFans as a supplementary income. “Pedro Pascal told me I should have an OnlyFans. That I could just wiggle my toe and make money,” she said. “Sounds intriguing.”
