PHOTOSHOOT
INTERVIEW
In The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, Dakota Johnson plays Nina, a young mother on vacation in Greece who becomes an object of obsession. The film is based on an Elena Ferrante novel of the same name and follows a woman named Leda, played with searing pathos by Olivia Colman, whose interactions with Nina force her to confront memories of raising her own two daughters. While the story takes a dark psychological turn, it sounds like the filming, which took place on a remote island in the fall of 2020, had the opposite vibe. For W’s annual Best Performances issue, Johnson tells Lynn Hirschberg about the cast’s late-night hotel room hangouts, going deep with Gyllenhaal, and her Hollywood childhood.
How did The Lost Daughter come to you? How did you first hear about it?
I read the script that Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote. And then I had a meeting with her. We had a late lunch in New York, at the Greenwich Hotel, where we immediately went, like, straight into the meat of life. And then I read with her a few weeks later in a casting office. And then she emailed me asking if I would be her Nina.
