Dakota Johnson has been an undercover agent of chaos since, well, forever, but it wasn’t until her iconic “that’s not the truth, Ellen” line that we truly began to understand the nature of just how mystifying she is. Like a benevolent eldritch god, she has risen again to display her delightful disregard of media training and all things PR. I welcome you to the chaos that is her Madame Web press tour.
It all started in January, when Johnson told Entertainment Weekly that it felt “absolutely psychotic” to act in front of a blue screen.
“I’ve never really done a movie where you are on a blue screen, and there’s fake explosions going off, and someone’s going, ‘Explosion!’ and you act like there’s an explosion,” she said.
“That to me was absolutely psychotic. I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be good at all! I hope that I did an OK job!’”
During the same week, she appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Fallon was being cheeky and having a laugh while Johnson was graciously sharing new information on the plot of Madame Web, which he asked her for.
Initially, she obliged him and tolerated his goods — and then the smile melted off her face and she told him to “take this seriously”. Honestly, this is the ghost of “that’s not the truth, Ellen” resurfacing to remind us not to fuck with it.
Since then, things have become even more unhinged.
By now you’ve probably seen the memes about one specific line in Madame Web‘s trailer that’s left Gen Z giggling into their iPhones. At around the 1.45 mark, Johnson says in her trademark deadpan voice: “He was in the Amazon with my mum when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
The line has left people baffled, partially because of its delivery and partially because of its clunky nature. We know it’s exposition, but it just feels so long — there are literally three conjunctions in it! You can check it out in the trailer below.
One brave Huffington Post journalist decided to ask Dakota Johnson about the meme during her press tour, which, predictably, did not go well for him. Absolute rookie mistake, my dude.
When he asked Johnson if she was across the viral nature of that line, she revealed she wasn’t. And then she said, eyes narrowed — in a tone that truly inspires fear in me — “Why did that go viral?”
The journalist, who at that point had become visibly terrified, tried to explain the situation (rather poorly, I might add, but I don’t blame him because I would also fumble if I was being stared down like that). He told Johnson that the line had perplexed TikTokers because it just sounds so strange when “out of context”.
With what can only be described as the condescension of someone trying to explain a simple concept to a lobotomy victim, Johnson responded: “But isn’t any sentence out of context… out of context?”
And then… the death blow.
“What a silly thing.”
In another Madame Webb press junket, a journalist whipped out a Madame Web comic book to impress Johnson. She literally said “Oh God, here we go” and then proceeded to grimace throughout the entire thing, only interjecting to say things like “wowee”, “woah” and “very cool” in varying tones of unintentional sarcasm. I have never seen a woman look so much like she wants to be elsewhere.
I would honestly never recover.
In yet another iconic video, Johnson was asked to name the three Spiderman movies starring Tom Holland. She… couldn’t.
Honestly, this is giving Robert Pattinson post-Twilight and I am absolutely living for it.
What’s next, a special edition of Madame Web with Dakota Johnson’s commentary on how insane she felt during each scene? Manifesting this right now.
Image: Carlos Tischler/ Eyepix Group/Future Publishing via Getty Images