Inside the "Fifty Shades Darker" Elevator Scene
Lucia Walters auditioned to play Belinda Prescott, the female security guard hired by Christian to protect Ana from Leila in Fifty Shades Freed, but didn’t get the part. Instead, she was cast as one of several restaurant patrons who ride an elevator with Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, clueless to the fact that Mr. Grey is fingering his girlfriend. Wilder than the scene itself is that Lucia was cast alongside her husband, Colin Lawrence. There's a real-life husband and wife in the Fifty Shades Darker finger-banging scene.
“I’ve read the books, I knew exactly what we were going in for,” Lucia says. “But my husband didn’t have a clue. He’s like, ‘Two days with you with no kids? Yes.’” The couple, who met in acting school and have been together for 17 years, stayed at the Hotel Vancouver courtesy of the studio (“we hung out and watched HGTV”) and worked two six- to eight-hour days.
First up was the restaurant scene, a night shoot, during which Lucia and Colin were seated one table over from Ana. I confess to not noticing them on my recent viewing of the movie (I was waiting for Ana to slip her undies off, sue me) - but sure enough, here they are.
This part of the job was simple if not a bit tedious-sounding: They sat on and off for hours. "I would take a sip of the pretend wine, but we didn't eat, you can't," Lucia says. "The food has to look the same for continuity - even if they never end up catching us [on screen] because they were too busy with the underwear!"
The elevator scene was a bit more complicated. It wasn't shot in a real elevator, obviously, so it required multiple takes to capture different angles. "They would put one wall down, another wall comes up," Lucia explains. Director James Foley has said this scene was the hardest for Dakota Johnson to shoot, given that she was "surrounded by ... strangers." But Lucia describes the mood as "very calm and professional" nonetheless. "You didn’t feel stress," she says. "It’s Jamie and Dakota’s second movie, so they obviously know each other really well.”
Close viewers will remember that, as Lucia and Colin exit the elevator, their characters exchange a few words. "I might have said, ‘Well, that was a lovely dinner.' And he’s like, 'Yeah, it was really good,'" she says. "But we did different takes," and she hasn't seen the movie yet, so she's not sure which one made the cut. "I think I’ll see it in my house when it comes out or maybe go see it with girlfriends in a couple weeks." (She's currently too busy shooting.)
"My hubby will not go see it," she says. But spending time with him was the best part of the shoot. "It was the highlight."
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