Dakota Johnson kicked off the 2023 Sundance Film Festival with gasps and giggles.
Johnson appeared at the “A Taste of Sundance” opening dinner on Thursday night to present her friend and collaborator Luca Guadagnino with the international icon award. On stage, she applauded the director’s Oscar-winning 2017 indie Call Me By Your Name, which premiered at Sundance, and joked that she’d been offered the role of Peach in the coming-of-age story . (In one of the film’s liveliest scenes, Timothée Chalamet’s character Elio performs a sexual act on a piece of fruit, which Hammer’s character eventually discovers.) But she had to turn down the central role due to scheduling conflicts, she says.
“But thank God,” 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 by extramarital partners. He has denied all allegations, and Hammer’s attorney has claimed that all interactions were “entirely consensual, discussed and agreed in advance and carried out in mutual participation”.
Dakota Johnson jokes she wasn’t cast #CallMeByYourName: “Luca had asked me to play the role of the peach, but our schedules were at odds. Thank goodness because then I would have been just another woman that Armie Hammer would have 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, eliciting laughter from the crowd at Park City’s Basin Recreation Fieldhouse.
Johnson, who starred in the 2015 Guadagnino psychological drama A Bigger Splash and the 2018 remake Suspiria, praised the filmmaker as a lover of cinema (and Prada) when she presented him with the festival’s international icon award.
“In my eyes and probably in your eyes too, Luca Guadagnino is the epitome of an international icon,” she said. “He wears Prada all the time.”