Entertainment

‘Gosh, this isn’t going well’: Ellen DeGeneres’ excruciating interview with Dakota Johnson

So awkward you can't look... but then you do because you just can't help it.
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It’s usually all fun and games on The Ellen DeGeneres Show but things went from awkward to excruciating when Ellen caught up with Dakota Johnson this week.

Ellen kicked off her chat with the Fifty Shades of Grey actress by wishing her a happy 30th birthday, and while this seemed a neutral enough start it quickly descended into cringe territory when Ellen asked Dakota how the party was, adding “I wasn’t invited”.

“Actually, no, that’s not the truth Ellen,” Dakota replied firmly. “You were invited.

“Last time on the show… you gave me a bunch of s..t about not inviting you but I didn’t even know you wanted to be invited.”

“Well, who doesn’t want to be invited to a party?” Ellen scrambled to recover.

Dakota responded with a dry “I didn’t even know you liked me”.

The sparring continued: “Of course I like you, you knew I liked you. You’ve been on this show many times and don’t I show you ‘like’?”

“But I did invite you and you didn’t come,” Dakota shrugged her shoulders in dismissal.

But Ellen, not to be outplayed, then went through a show of seeming unconvinced: “This time you invited me? Are you sure?”

Dakota told her “ask everybody, ask your producer, Jonathan.”

“Why didn’t I come?” Ellen asked her production crew.

“You were out of town,” a crew member yelled back.

Dakota refused to let Ellen off the hook when Ellen accused her of not inviting her to Dakota’s 30th birthday party.

But the cringe factor didn’t end there.

Ellen then tried to tell Dakota that if it hadn’t been for an event she’d held that Dakota had attended, Dakota might never have heard of the stand-up comedian she’d at her 30th birthday party, Tig Notaro.

Once again, Ellen’s suggestion was rejected, with Dakota explaining she hadn’t seen Tig at Ellen’s event because she’d left early. She also told Ellen that Tig was her favourite comedian. Ouch.

“Gosh, this isn’t going well,” Dakota said at one point, in the understatement of the year.

But if you thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did when Ellen then ploughed into digging for information on Dakota’s relationship with Coldplay singer Chris Martin.

The couple are rumoured to back together after splitting in June, but they’re notoriously private and rarely spotted together in public.

“Recently you came to our Gorillapalooza event,” Ellen said. “I don’t know if you saw, but Chris Martin was there… Did you see him?”

Johnson shut that line of enquiry down with a simple, “I think I saw him from afar”.

At this point, almost two minutes and 30 seconds into a five-minute interview, the audience must have been desperate to exit the studio. Ellen dedicated the rest of the interview to discussing Dakota’s latest movie, The Peanut Butter Falcon, and all we can say is thank goodness.

Now, everybody breathe a collective sigh of relief.

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